
Class B T?l3 i 
Book. , Ml2 



Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



THE UNEXPLORED 
SELF 



AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE FOR 
TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 



BY 

GEORGE R. MONTGOMERY, Ph.D. 

Assistant Minister at the Madison Square Presbyterian Church 
New York City 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Cbe Iknicfterbockec (press 
1910 






Copyright, 1910 

BY 

GEORGE R. MONTGOMERY 



XTbe fmfcfterbocfeer iptess, Hew UJorfe 



)CI,A2732 



PREFACE 

AMONG the prospective teachers who came 
under my instruction at Yale University 
and at Carleton College, I discovered a sense of 
unpreparedness for the definitely religious in- 
fluence which a schoolroom must have, even 
though no religion is taught. Furthermore, stu- 
dents with whom I have talked seem to have 
perplexingly wrong ideas as to the content of 
Christianity. It is the teachers and students 
that have been primarily in mind in the prepara- 
tion of this Introduction to Christian Doctrine. 

The beginnings of this volume, however, go 
back a long way. After graduation, I set out 
indefinitely to follow up my statement in the 
class book as to my object in life, viz., to discover 
as far as possible the purpose in existence, and so 
far as that purpose was found, to carry out my 
share in it. After drifting here and there I had 
the good fortune to take a long journey on horse- 
back with another newspaper correspondent, who 
was thoroughly familiar with the philosophies and 
had every idea labelled by a school and a sub- 
school. Our journey took us through wild coun- 
try where we had practically no diversion but to 



IV 



Preface 



talk. A horseback journey with a small caravan 
is, in this respect, different from any other kind 
of a trip; there is no haste, no sight-seeing, no 
reading, and the travellers have plenty of breath 
to converse and plenty of time to think. 

Every few days we would come to some centre 
where American missionaries were stationed and 
the contrast between the atmosphere around 
them and elsewhere was marked. It happened 
that at one place we were invited in to " family 
prayers" and the story of Paul's conversion on 
his way to Damascus was read. This incident, 
of course, may have had its part in the result. 

Along the way we discussed every conceivable 
subject, although the problems of philosophy were 
especially congenial to us. At the beginning we 
were both agnostics; I had, however, without 
knowing why, pretty well made up my mind that 
there must be a value in existence and the fact 
that the missionaries were doing something, while 
we were only talking about it, impressed me. I 
found that from the foundation of a meaning in 
things, without any of my friend's erudition or his 
skill in analysis, I was yet able to hold my own 
and to build up a more satisfactory system than 
he could. At the end of the two months my 
mind was made up to accept the propaganda of 
that bash as my life work and this volume is a 
part of that development and propaganda. 

I regret the savor of sensationalism in the 
title, but it about expresses my intention. The 



Preface v 

word self is freer from limiting connotations than 
would be the words mind, ego, or soul. The 
exploration of the mind has been relegated to 
psychology; the very existence of the soul or of 
the ego has been disputed; every one, however, 
is interested in the self and no one can deny its 
reality. Yet even with so uncontroversial a word, 
I find myself using it in three different senses: 
first, the self in its large sense, including every nook 
and corner of the interests; second, the central 
self, or, if you will, the very self of very self, the 
nucleus of the new self; third, in contrast with 
the new self, the older interests or the old self. 

I am indebted to Rev. John De Peu of Bridge- 
port, Conn., and to Prof. H. H. Tweedy of Yale 
University, who read the manuscript and made 
valuable suggestions. 

G. R. M. 

New York City, 
May 15, 1910. 

Note. — In the following pages I have endeavored to 
avoid polemics and to direct the attention to the essentials. 
A little volume, however, which has just come to hand has 
suggested a few words in explanation of my attitude toward 
controversial subjects. The book is entitled, The Funda- 
mentals, and the preface says that a copy has been "sent to 
every pastor, evangelist, missionary, theological professor, 
theological student, Sunday school superintendent, Y. M. C. A. 
and Y. W. C. A. secretary in the English-speaking world." 

The first chapter is a defence of and an insistence upon the 
doctrine of the Virgin Birth. If the enormous distribution 
of the book extends the idea that belief in the Virgin Birth 
is a primary tenet of Christian Doctrine, the result will be 
unfortunate. Discussion of the Virgin Birth is a matter for 
those who have advanced far in Christian thought. If put 



vi Preface 

foremost it entails so many other questions that the inquirer 
will likely never reach the true gospel as presented by Christ 
and the apostles. 

The entire volume of which I am speaking is conceived in a 
combative mood and instead of making clearer the funda- 
mentals will tend to provoke debate among those who 
already accept Christianity. 

The second chapter, for instance, is entitled: "The Deity 
of Christ." I am perfectly willing to accept the phrase 
provided the New Testament idea of Christ's personality be 
retained, but, in general, any distinction between divinity 
and deity belongs to an advanced understanding of theo- 
logy and is out of place at the very beginning. 

The chapter on "Higher Criticism, " likewise, affirms 
that as a pre-requisite to Christian faith must come the 
acceptance of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. 
Such assertions divert the discussion from the fundamentals 
to the disputes. The triviality of this particular dispute 
appears when we imagine some one coming forward with a 
theory of Samuel's having written the two books that go by 
his name. Samuel dies quite some time before the close of 
the first book and it would be absurd to insist that quotation 
from either of the books by name would determine authorship. 

It is the radical and militant spirit of the entire volume 
that is deplorable, and it is gratifying to know that more and 
more the spiritualism and conservatism of the Pauline and 
Johannine theology are prevailing over the crass materialism 
of the metaphysicians. 





CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 

I. 


The Worth of a Man . 


PAGE 
I 


II. 


The Divinity of Christ 


• 13 


III. 


The Witness to God . 


• 23 


IV. 


The Mystery Made Manifest 


• 35 


V. 


Incarnation 


• 47 


VI. 


The Divine Incarnation 


• 56 


VII. 


The Living Christ 


66 


VIII. 


Self-Giving 


• 77 


IX. 


Kinship and the Cross 


86 


X. 


The First and Great Command 

MENT .... 


95 


XI. 


Under Authority 


108 


XII. 


The Communion of the Holy 
Spirit . 


119 


XIII. 


The Atrophy of Death 


130 


XIV. 


The Armor of Light . 


142 



viii Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XV. The Lifted Dome . . .155 

XVI. Doubt a Shrinking Back . .166 

XVII* Faith an Apprizal . . .176 

XVIII. The Treasure and the Self . 187 

XIX. Religion the Grading of Things 

Precious 197 

XX. The Reborn Self . . . 208 

XXI. Confidence in the Ideal . .219 

XXII. The Place of the Church . . 227 

XXIII. The Men and Women of To- 
morrow ..... 238 



The Unexplored Self 



The Unexplored Self 



CHAPTER I 

THE WORTH OF A MAN 



TO the worth of real estate and mines, of stocks 
and bonds, tons of printed matter are de- 
voted daily. The value of corn and meat is 
quoted even far into the coming months. A man 
may know the worth at any given moment of his 
cattle pen, his pigs, and his poultry. 

But where shall he look to know his own value? 

When slaves were bought and sold, the worth of 
some men was definitely fixed. Dealers figured 
the heredity, age, health, intelligence, and charac- 
ter. There are, however, no available slave- 
market quotations now. 

Political economy has made an effort to affix a 
valuation to man. Its quotations are in terms 
of exchange, of hours work, of money, and such 



2 The Unexplored Self 

like. The results are something like balancing a 
rainbow against a load of hay. 

When a man has been killed in an accident, a 
jury is sometimes called upon to tell the loss. 
Five thousand dollars has been the agreed maxi- 
mum. In some places, where salary and age are 
reckoned, the loss of one man has been put as 
high as one hundred thousand dollars. 

Lineage and wealth give the scale in the opinion 
of many. In the opinion of others a man's 
efficiency measures his value. "He gets results, 
he is a valuable man," is the commendation. 

There are various opinions upon this intensely 
practical subject — opinions differing as widely as 
the east from the west, and as the north from the 
south. We may group them therefore about 
four cardinal points of view. 



There is, first, the popular estimate, the day- 
to-day view, that a few men are worth a great 
deal while most men are worth little or nothing. 
Usually the person making the estimate puts 
himself in the minority list. 

That there are immense differences in the worth 
of men appears on the face of it. One football 
player may be worth a whole team. One finan- 
cier may be worth an entire directorate. One 
statesman may be worth a national party. 

An ancient Hebrew chieftain was told : Thou art 



The Worth of a Man 3 

worth ten thousand of us. The statement is sur- 
prising, not so much because of the assertion, but 
because the fact was clearly recognized and clearly- 
stated so long ago. There is also room for sur- 
prise that one of the ten thousand saw the dis- 
parity of values. I am worth ten thousand of 
you, is the customary way of thinking or at least 
of acting about the matter. 

The temptation easily comes to the literary 
man, for instance, to regard his crafts-fellows as 
the elect and to lump the rest of humanity to- 
gether as the Philistines. There may be on the 
one hand "our set," and, in contrast with our set, 
the negligibles. 

This view was crystallized for the Greeks by 
the phrase, hoi polloi, the many. The fling of the 
phrase has been made still more stinging, since 
Nietzsche developed it into "the far too many," 
Die viel zu viele. With this slur does he always 
refer to the masses. 

The far too many — it is not difficult to appreci- 
ate the phrase and almost approve of it. When 
we think of the meaningless hordes who swarm 
the streets and pack the lodging-houses, men and 
women seem unnecessarily numerous. 

America would be practically as prosperous if 
Europe, Asia, and Africa were wiped from the 
map. We would as a nation grieve if the people 
of South America, Mexico, and Canada were sud- 
denly submerged, for we are a sympathetic 



4 The Unexplored Self 

nation, but our life would go on practically 
undisturbed. Human beings appear superflu- 
ously many. 

The more one considers the teeming millions 
in the backward and over-populated countries, 
the more he is tempted to say that by far the 
larger per cent, of earth's humanity could be 
dispensed with. Men have multiplied far beyond 
their best good. 

This is apt to be the verdict of geniuses like 
Goethe, who believed that only a favored; few 
achieve immortality, while the great mass of men 
become extinct at death. 

The same verdict is easily adopted by the 
millionaire, by the society leader, by the heredi- 
tary nobleman, yes, by the clerk in the office or 
store, and by the day-laborer. 

The working belief, perhaps not expressly 
formulated, is that there are a few who are worth 
a great deal, while the run of men are worth 
practically nothing. 

By some representatives of Christianity, also, 
this verdict has been shared. The elect, the few, 
are loved of God. The wicked, that is the 
great majority, are in God's sight nothing 
or worse than nothing, perhaps a good deal 
worse. 

It is like the uptown and downtown trains. 
Those who ride to destruction must expect 



The Worth of a Man 5 

crowding and strap-hanging. He who is riding 
to salvation has a whole car to himself. 



We have spoken of four cardinal views and car- 
rying out our simile the next quadrant on our 
binnacle card gives the theory that the worth of 
every man, without exception, is so small that it 
can be said there is no value; there is no intrinsic 
worth in men. 

Those who take this view dwell on the short- 
ness of life compared with eternity. Man is the 
creature of a day. He is one of the ephemera — 
an insect that buzzes for a summer afternoon. 

This conclusion dwells on the littleness of 
man in comparison with infinite space. Compared 
with the universe man is a speck, a million times 
more microscopic than the animalcules which are 
breathed in the air. 

This opinion dwells on the fact of death with 
no return of news from beyond. 

The view is eagerly grasped by the pleasure 
loving for whom the philosophy of indifference 
thus easily becomes a fad. It is in the line of the 
least resistance. 

Man is made of clay like the potter's vessel and 
when broken he returns to clay. Death is dis- 
solution of soul as well as of body. Eat, drink, 
and be merry, for to-morrow we die. 



6 The Unexplored Self 

We are not called upon here' to discuss this 
view, nor to criticise it as dulling and degrad- 
ing. Our purpose is merely to mention it as 
an estimate of worth that has found favor in 
certain circles. 



Another quadrant brings the third view, which 
emphasizes the equality of men in value. In this 
respect it is the opposite of the first. 

The American Declaration of Independence 
stated that all men are born equal. Perhaps the 
equality which the fathers of the country had in 
mind was rather political than valuational, yet 
there is no doubt that the words of the Declaration 
have done much to spread the idea that all men 
are actually equal — that the accomplishments or 
attainments of so-called great men do not enhance 
their actual valuation — that human beings are 
in the final analysis all in one plane and of equal 
significance. 

The standpoint is theoretical rather than practi- 
cal. It cannot be carried out in its application. 
Nevertheless it has vogue as a theory and as a 
step in the right direction it has done much good. 
It has been helpful in warring with slavery and in 
opposing the tyranny of birth. 

Many have thought that Christ's emphasis 
on the worth of the human soul sanctioned the 



The Worth of a Man 7 

opinion that all Christians, at least, are intrin- 
sically the same before God. 

This third view will not stand any test. Men 
are not born equal and rather than the years 
bringing equality, men as they age diverge more 
and more. Likewise the direction of social life 
is not toward equality but toward greater in- 
equality. The divergence increases with in- 
creased social life, just as two hod-carriers are 
more alike than the same two men should they 
become masons. 

Measured by every reliable standard men are 
not equal and an actual belief that they are in- 
evitably so will cut off progress and advance. If 
my exertions and attainments do not enhance my 
value or my neighbor's value, there is little motive 
for endeavor and accomplishment. 

I am as good as you are, may be an overwhelm- 
ing argument in a pinch, it is hardly justified if 
indiscriminately proclaimed. 

There must be misunderstanding somewhere 
if no difference is to be allowed between the loafer 
and the worker, the parasite and the citizen, the 
destroyer and the builder. 



The fourth quadrant brings in turn the belief 
which may be distinguished as the Christian view, 
viz., that all men are worth a great, great deal — 



8 The Unexplored Self 

are of great, great value, and that they yet have 
also unlimited possibility of growth in value. It is 
a return toward the first, the day-to-day position, 
but on a much higher plane — even the latent 
misanthropy is eliminated. 

Christ's teaching was that all men are the chil- 
dren of God. He believed in the divinity of man 
as man, a veritable sonship, a real divinity. 

It was and is a bold position and one hard to 
establish. Every one must be at times over- 
whelmed with its difficulties. 

Taken sincerely it means so much! All the 
glory which has clustered about the head of Christ 
is to be retained and then man received as his 
actual brother. There is no cause for wonder 
that when its teaching is understood and accepted, 
Christianity works a revolution. 

No wonder is it also that the teaching is so 
difficult. It is much easier apparently to feel 
contempt for men. 

There are many witty sayings of the type of: 
"The better I know men the better I like dogs." 
Ordinary men — ordinary men are weak. They 
do wrong naturally. They are like stupid sheep. 
They are of the earth earthy. They are mean 
and petty, lazy and revengeful. Sometimes it 
seems as though we must go against all the evi- 
dence when we speak of the nobility of the 
ordinary man. 

In the opinion of many it shows the stamp of 



The Worth of a Man 9 

sagacity to sneer at his pretentiousness. "What 
is man, that any one is mindful of him?" they 
ask. 

Perhaps an overman may in time be evolved 
who will amount to something; but the genus 
homo of the Quaternary age is altogether impo- 
tent and despicable. 

Perhaps Society as an organism may be of 
value, but the individuals are as unimportant and 
replaceable as the tissue cells which constitute 
a body. 

It is in protest against this superficial and 
cynical standpoint that Christianity raises the 
standard. Over against the logic of materialism 
it opposes the equally logical position of idealism. 
Against the chains of mechanicalism, it sets the 
actualities of spirit and achievement. Against 
the immensities of stellar space, it sets the mind 
which is able to overleap and investigate that 
space. 

Against man's greed knd selfishness it sets up 
the example of unselfishness. Against man's 
weakness it sets the strength of Christ, whose 
purpose mountains heaped upon him could not 
have broken. Against the fact of death it urges 
such a view of life that death will be regarded 
merely as an incident and not the end. Against 
the absence of proven value it appeals to the 
actual experience of value and worth which every 
one, even the victim of melancholia, has. 



io The Unexplored Self 

6 

The fight is on, and a very vigorous one it is. 
The Christian position is opposed, and bitterly- 
opposed. Self-centredness cannot easily be over- 
thrown. 

The creed of Christianity calls for an inversion 
of all material values. Aside from its theoretical 
difficulties, it also calls for an abandonment of 
prejudice, of exclusiveness, of narrowness, of 
selfishness, of carelessness. It cannot be estab- 
lished without a struggle. 

The reality and importance of this fourth view, 
the divinity of man, is only just emerging into 
sight. 

The idea has to battle against the physicalism 
which centuries of material struggle have woven 
into our thought. It has to contend with animal- 
ism and egoism — against cliques and classes. 

To establish the belief is not within the power 
of any syllogism or argumentation. It must be 
separately established by each one for himself alone 
and by himself alone. No outsider can establish 
it so as to make it a reality. 

Our purpose here is not so much to prove the 
truth of this fourth view, as to call attention to it, 
to show its incomparable significance, to indicate 
its approaches and deductions, in the hope that 
each one may work out and appreciate it for 
himself. 



The Worth of a Man n 



These are the four cardinal views: first, a few 
worth much, the rest nothing; second, all nothing; 
third, all equal; fourth, all worth a great, great 
deal with possibilities of immense improvement. 

Society now rests on the first world-view as a 
basis. Fortunately under this day-to-day view, al- 
though the unregarded are disregarded, each little 
circle behaves as if its members were to be con- 
sidered highly and the sum-total of public opinion 
comes about that things are worth doing and 
worth doing well. Life zigzags along through 
the activity of each circle as though man in 
general had some value. 

As soon, however, as the appeal is to make those 
in one circle or coterie put a high estimate on those 
outside, and as soon as the basis of allowing even 
each coterie a value is challenged, the importance 
and the difficulty also of the fourth view appear. 

About this point will centre the controversies 
of the immediate future. Is it true that a human 
being is of supreme value? There are many 
evidences that the opposite theory which decries 
the value of the individual man has been gaining 
ground among scientists and philosophers. 

The fourth view, based on man's relation to 
God, is the distinct contribution of Christianity 
to the thought of society. Of all gifts it is the 
most important. 



12 The Unexplored Self 

No system of philosophy, no school of science 
has ever brought forward a contribution to com- 
pare with it. It is the idea for which mankind 
has been waiting. It sums up the desires of all 
peoples. It expresses the deepest and most pas- 
sionate yearning of the heart. It establishes a 
stable foundation for the theory of universal 
brotherhood. It provides a sanction for the word 
" ought.' ' It gives a logical substructure for the 
sentiments of sympathy and love. 

This is the tonic of which society stands in 
need. This is the faith to quicken church and 
religion. This is the sedative for wars. It is 
the incentive for philanthropic labor and human- 
itarian effort. 

Children of God is the expression used by the 
apostles. The expression may be accepted or 
not, the import, at least, can be seen; it can be 
seen how world transforming the words may be. 

If they have no justification all other words 
become a babbling of tongues. If they have no 
meaning the entire value of life is undermined. 
If they become true to a man, he is born again — 
he becomes an heir of God and a joint heir with 
Christ. His life amounts to something. His 
deeds have a meaning. His hopes are justified. 
His yearnings are valid. 

The child of God, then, is the Christian phrase 
for approaching and stating this fourth view. It 
hinges on the divinity of Christ. 



CHAPTER II 

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 



THE questioning spirit, which holds so high a 
place in modern pedagogies, often overlooks 
the part that wisdom must play in the selection 
of questions. A sage spends as much time in fix- 
ing his inquiries as he does in finding his answers. 

This is a hard point for the Spirit of Interroga- 
tion as it bustles about to grasp. A crude thinker 
says: "Here's a problem; up and at it." And 
the frenetic manner in which people run down 
answers to propounded problems verges on the 
ridiculous. 

All are supposed to know that a fool can make 
inquiries which a wise man cannot answer, but 
there are many under the delusion that it is as 
important to answer a fool question as a wise one. 

One of the greatest causes for irreligion is that 
people are not as careful in their search for ques- 
tions as they are in their search for answers. 

Two boys may be given a problem, one of those 
13 



14 The Unexplored Self 

intricate ones concerning the tank of water with 
pipes running out. One boy may have half a dozen 
solutions, while the other has only just decided 
what he is looking for, what x, the unknown 
quantity, is to represent — and the second boy 
may quite likely be further along than the first. 
Christianity has suffered because men have 
agitated the unessentials and have not understood 
its real problem. 



An epitome of religious catechetics is found in 
the ninth chapter of John's Gospel, where many, 
many questions are asked of and regarding a 
certain blind man who, the narrative tells us, 
was cured of his blindness. These questions indi- 
cate great interest and reveal a twentieth- century 
culture. They were asked by Christ's disciples, 
by the neighbors of the blind man, by the multi- 
tudes who thronged about, by the Pharisees, by 
the man himself. 

In contrast with such questions there is one put 
by Christ to this same man after the final excom- 
munication, a question which is the whole cate- 
chism of Christianity: Dost thou believe on the 
Son of God? 

This transported the matter into a different 
realm. It sounded out above the superficial 
inquiries as a great chord sounds out above 
whispering and chattering. 



The Divinity of Christ 15 

We are told that the disciples drew into prom- 
inence this blind man first, desiring to know why 
he was born blind. 

It was the ancient problem of evil: why does 
God permit evil? It remains to-day an unsolved 
problem. Yet there are those who hold to that 
one problem, and make its insolubility their 
excuse for not pressing on to the problem of good. 

The answer given is perhaps as adequate as any 
yet found : Neither hath this man sinned nor his 
parents but that the works of God should be 
manifested in him. 



It was talk of the cure that piled up questions 
and aroused discussion. The narrative preserves 
for us perfectly, almost like a phonograph, the 
record of the clamor and the clatter. It is in 
miniature two thousand years' argument about 
Christianity. Christ did not wish the cure of 
the body nor the miracle to be the important thing 
in the minds of the disciples. Again and again 
did he point them to their own awakened con- 
sciousness as the evidence of his divinity. Again 
and again did he try to show that the common 
things of their life, the everyday occurrences, 
where love was present, were clearer revelations 
of God than the extraordinary things. Yet they 
sought after wonders and about them alone would 
they argue. 



16 The Unexplored Self 

In this respect we do not seem to be much in 
advance of the Jews of whom Paul complained 
that they required miracles for proofs although 
he presented no wonders but only a " stumbling- 
block, " a crucified Messiah. 

There has ever been a perversity in human 
nature which would equate unknown and divinity. 
That was Herbert Spencer's primitivism. 

For a complete discussion of the question of 
miracles there is a call for careful definitions of 
such words as natural and supernatural, of causal- 
ity, of personality. But these things should never 
distract from the essential content of the Christian 
faith which can to-day, at least, be given with 
the so-called wonders passed by. 

Perhaps it will be enough here to say, on the 
one hand, that every day we interfere in the 
natural course of events — we change them; that 
we are not deterred from making requests of one 
another by the danger of breaking the chain of 
cause and effect; that it is not difficult, further- 
more, to find the word natural insufficient when 
speaking of the fact that the ink leaves the ink- 
well and is spread on the page to make this sen- 
tence; and that we swim in a sea of mystery 
where commonest events are as miraculous, as 
11 divine, "as the unexplained. 

And it is enough to say, on the other hand, that 
the ability to do marvels is no evidence of divin- 
ity. Magic has been as much the ally of evil as of 



The Divinity of Christ 17 

good. When the miraculous birth of Christ is 
urged in many quarters as the most important 
evidence for his divine sonship, the point to be 
made against such an argument is not its scientific 
impossibility; science recognizes no such impos- 
sibility; the point is rather that a birth from a 
virgin is of itself no more evidence of divinity 
than it is of monstrosity. 

No, the divinity of the son of man is more 
wonderful than any one has been able to imagine. 
At the same time it is near and simple. Thor- 
oughly supernatural is it, if by natural we 
mean the mechanicalism of physics. Thoroughly 
natural it is, if by natural we mean those events 
that fit vitally into human experience. 

It is unfortunate that miracles, which never 
gave a worthy understanding of Christianity, 
should in these latter days become in turn the 
stumbling-block to keep men away altogether. 
The narratives in the New Testament show that 
those who followed Christ because of the miracles 
least understood him. 

It is possible that the death on the cross was 
accepted, in part, to shock, as it were, his disciples 
into a deeper view of his message. 



The call is to turn from the many questions 
and to see the meaning of the essential one of 



18 The Unexplored Self 

Christianity: Dost thou believe on the son of 
God? 

A consideration of the meaning of the phrase, 
the son of God, need not open up the usual im- 
mense controversial fields. If we understand 
the line of approach, we shall, I believe, agree 
upon the simplicity of the question, and the answer 
will come to each one from his own experience 
and never from theological argumentation. 

The difficulty which people have with the 
phrase, the son of God, would seem to arise 
because, instead of starting with the facts and so 
working out their theories, they start with the 
theories and try to square the facts with them. 

It is the old difficulty of metaphysics inter- 
fering with science. Without a sufficient basis 
of fact, certain ideas about God have obtained 
sway. He is omniscient, omnipotent, immutable, 
absolute, and a great mass of similar attributes 
are superadded, many of which are irreconcilable, 
but withal pompous, magniloquent, majestic, and 
having in them the very essence of infinity. 

Now then with all this host of attendant con- 
ceptions which seem irrevocably associated with 
the thought of God, they come to the phrase, 
Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God, and the phrase 
seems absurd. 

The phrase seems absurd to them, unless pos- 
sibly Jesus of Nazareth can be provided also with 
the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience; 
and some enthusiasts have not hesitated to say 



The Divinity of Christ 19 

that he had them, though the narratives do not 
say so nor did Jesus claim any such attributes. 

In contrast with this favorite approach of 
Natural Theology and of most who come to the 
phrase with a background of metaphysics, is 
the approach through experience, where out of 
despair and inability to find God or to find any- 
thing in life that is sufficient, the steps lead to 
this peasant of Galilee with his kindliness, his 
love for man as man, his belief in the worth of 
life and in a heavenly father. 

He was a carpenter who can, first of all, at least 
be sympathized with and liked. Now can his 
confidence that there is a meaning in his and in 
our existence be accepted? 

The progress is, therefore, from that which is 
better known to that which is less evident. 
Science says that we must come to her altars un- 
prejudiced and likewise Jesus claimed that only 
those who had the childlike willingness to be 
taught could enter the kingdom of heaven. 



One of the benefits of the Agnosticism that 
swept over our thought world in the last century 
was that it compelled men to realize how little they 
knew about God. 

In part as a result of this wave of Agnosticism 
we are better ready to begin over again ; and now 



20 The Unexplored Self 

the phrase, Jesus the son of God, presents an 
entirely different problem, not a complicated one. 
We are now ready to understand it as I believe 
Christ intended us to. 

The question latent in the phrase, the son of 
God, has seemed to many to be : God being already 
known, could Jesus have been his son? The 
real problem is: Jesus being known, did he have 
a father God? Was his faith justified? 

The problem is not: God we have found out 
about, now was Jesus his son ; but : Jesus we know, 
now did he have a heavenly father? 

Those who assent to the phrase look to their own 
heart's response for the answer, and say yes; and 
the turning point of the whole problem of Chris- 
tianity is at this place. If Christ had that personal 
relationship to the meaning of life, we may also 
have it. 

The importance of Christ's message is not in 
his ethics; in this he is not unique; but in his 
claim of an immediate personal relation through 
his spirit of service and self-sacrifice to a directing 
Spirit of love. 

Christianity holds to the strictly scientific or 
positivistic method. It works from the known 
to the unknown. It passes from Jesus to God and 
not vice versa. We reach deity through the high- 
est human. And from this standpoint anthropo- 
morphism is not unnatural. Jesus' spirit we learn 
to love first and then we ask in regard to God. 



The Divinity of Christ 21 

It is this difference in direction which makes 
the Unitarian totally different from the Evangel- 
ical Christian. This is not a day to advocate a 
policy of exclusion but the two views are diametri- 
cally opposed. The Unitarian has answers to a 
long train of questions, in theory at least, before 
he reaches Christ ; while Evangelical Christianity 
finds in the yearning of Christ something trans- 
cendent and passes only step by step to the higher 
implicates of this yearning. 

The Evangelical Christian finds the highest 
thing in experience to be the love and service 
which made the character of Christ ; and therefore 
the idea of God will contain most clearly these 
attributes. The Evangelical will speak of God 
not as the Absolute, which carries little meaning, 
nor as the Unknown, which means nothing at all, 
but as the Helper of humanity, the Worker, the 
Purposer, the Parent, as Love. 

Though sympathizing with delight in nature 
and delight in the manifestation of God to be 
found in the beauty of the rocks and the seas, he 
will still find more of the image of God in the 
foul tramp than in the verdure of spring or the 
infinity of stellar space. He will find more of him 
in the foul tramp because he considers even a 
spark of yearning and desire to be among the high- 
est of experiences, higher than colors or beauty ; 
and therefore his ideas of God will be fashioned 
according to these highest goods. 

In using the phrase, the son of God, he will not 



22 The Unexplored Self 

feel that he is dragging God down but that he is rais- 
ing man up to the nobler levels of his experience. 



It is for this reason that the Church clings so 
tenaciously to the phrase and is not satisfied with 
any system which repudiates it. In it is the hope 
of life, that which lifts man out of the temporal 
and the earthly. If it be rejected men are nought. 

Non-Christian and Pseudo-Christian systems 
begin their text-books with exhaustive questions 
upon deity and the attributes of deity, and after- 
ward come to talk about man or about Christ. 
Evangelical Christianity would have Christ in the 
first chapters, as the introduction to religious 
matters, and then ask about corollaries of his 
life and thought. It would put the question asked 
of the man born blind as the dominating problem. 

The question as to the meaning of our days and 
as to our destiny is after all the most important 
and most pressing that can agitate minds. Do 
we believe that frail humanity through its desire 
for soul progress and for service, called to con- 
sciousness through the spirit of Christ, is inti- 
mately related to a divinity, as children are to 
parents? The direction of knowledge is from Jesus 
the son of man, to God the Father of mankind. 

This problem in the divinity of Christ and its 
approach to God will become clearer if we con- 
trast other approaches. 



CHAPTER III 

THE WITNESS TO GOD 



THE life of Christ was an out-of-doors life. 
His teachings encourage bird-lore and stim- 
ulate nature study. His sayings have the flavor 
of the fields and the aroma of the flowers. 

A happy corollary of the Christian theorem is 
it that nature and man are kindred. We may 
speak with Saint Francis of our brother the wind 
and of our sister the rain. Christ said that our 
common heavenly father fed the birds and pro- 
vided the raiment for the grass. 

He delighted in nature and loved its bigness 
along with its simplicity. He appreciated its 
charm as well as its grandeur. It is safe to speak 
of him as inspiring the recourse to nature for 
recreation and for reviving. 

We are making no attempt, however, to corner, 
as it were, the love of nature in behalf of Chris- 
tianity. Pagan love of nature has in general 
perhaps been even more conspicuous than has 
Christian. There has not been wanting in all 

23 



24 The Unexplored Self 

grades of religious development, actual worship 
of nature, and this worship has received its theo- 
retic basis in the systems of pantheism. 

Yet there is one thing which distinguishes the 
Christian love of nature, and this is the main point 
of our consideration, Christ used his delight in 
nature to draw nearer to men and to appreciate 
men more. 

He turned to nature, not in order to escape 
into a better realm and into a nobler atmosphere, 
but he called attention to the wonders of nature 
in order to enhance the value of men. 

Christianity differs from Paganism in that 
Paganism passes directly to God from nature and 
from nature objects, man being lightly esteemed; 
its great gods are primarily nature forces. Chris- 
tianity, even when it recognizes the witness to 
God in nature, traces the witness back 
through human experience; in all of its flights 
to God, therefore, it takes the human with it. 

Modern Paganism finds happiness by forgetting 
suffering which is an essential part of reality. 
Christianity reveals a suffering God. 



In the strain of modern existence many have 
felt themselves literally driven back to nature. 
The poetic movement and the scientific move- 
ment of the last century together with the con- 



The Witness to God 25 

jested urban life have all combined to exalt our 
appreciation of the hills and of the trees. 

The exuberance of life in the open has become a 
sort of cult. Men feel their souls purified while 
gazing upon moving waters, and strengthened by 
the motionless peaks. They feel their person- 
alities expanding under the influence of wide 
horizons and vast stretches of country. Such 
experiences seem conducive to a worshipful 
mood. 

The silence, whether of blue sky or of thick, 
leafy branches overhead, seems to allure one to the 
thought of communion with the divine spirit. 
Our modern literature is sprinkled with passages 
where prayers and praise seem the involuntary 
expression induced by the splendor or charm of 
outdoor surroundings. 

This feeling is typified in the closing lines of 
Coleridge's Hymn to Mont Blanc: 

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost, 
Ye wild goats, sporting round the eagle's nest, 
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm, 
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds, 
Ye signs and wonders of the elements 
Utter forth God and fill the hills with praise ! 
Thou too, hoar Mount, . . . 
Rise like a cloud of incense to the skies ! 
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, 
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, 
Great Hierarch, tell thou the silent sky 



26 The Unexplored Self 

And tell the stars and tell yon rising sun — 
Earth with her thousand voices praises God. 

Such exclamations and such rhapsodies are not 
to be disparaged. Out-of-door worship is rather 
to be encouraged. Most of Christ's services were 
held with no roofs overhead. He might have 
asked with Bryant: 

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect 
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore 
Only among the crowd and under roofs 
That our frail hands have raised? 

There is a definite religious advantage in the 
fact that out-of-doors, social distinctions are easily 
obliterated. The garments of nature are so rich 
and delicate that even the family of Croesus is in 
no position to be puffed up. 

Nevertheless, the modern nature worship 
which is dissociated from the usual walks 
of men, is in grave danger of being pagan 
because it easily nourishes a lessening regard 
for the common man, and there is and has 
been much paganism masquerading as Chris- 
tianity. 

The difference depends on whether the inspira- 
tion caught from nature passes through an interest 
in man while on its way to God, or whether man 
is left out. Any worship which leads away from 
man as revealing God most intimately and 
essentially, is unchristian. 



The Witness to God 27 



Unfortunately, until one has penetrated to the 
deeper value in human beings, it is easier to love 
the woods and the ocean and the sky than it is 
to love the neighbor. 

The meanness and pettiness of his fellow human 
beings wears upon one and he says, Oh, for wings 
like a dove to fly away and be at rest. It is easier, 
he finds, to maintain equanimity in the presence 
of inanimate objects. In the wilds, where there is 
no competition and rivalry, serenity of temper is 
not difficult. 

There, free from contentions and shams, in the 
midst of the harmony and beauty, he can learn once 
more to laugh and relax. There, in the quiet and 
peace, he can discover God and the spirit of God. 
There, he can exult and feel earth's grandeur. I 
have heard many speak in this strain. 

Christ, however, felt all this exultation and gran- 
deur in the contemplation of man. He discovered 
God even more in the streets and the homes. For 
him there was no delight or ecstasy to compare 
with the love and sympathy among human beings. 

Christianity finds more of God in the wretched 
prodigal, yes, in the reeling drunkard than in the 
gorgeous sunset or the thundering waterfall. 

Christianity looks beneath the inconsistencies 
and the vanities and appreciates the soul. It 
looks beneath the deception and selfishness to 



28 The Unexplored Self 

find the kindliness and generosity. It looks be- 
neath the fret and anxiety to find the stability and 
continuity. 

All the ecstasy of wide outlooks and great vistas 
it feels in viewing the past and the future of man. 
It may turn to nature for quiet and change, but 
not to escape the call of the human. 



In fact any contemplation of nature discloses 
the human there before it does the divine. Just as 
history is man drawn out to show his development, 
so nature is man spread out as a revelation to us 
of character. 

Nature has even more cruelty and repulsiveness 
than man, but it is there detached in such a way 
that we can pick and choose, while in the actual 
human being the good and the bad are often 
snugly interwoven. The fangs and the snarls are 
often not to be avoided. 

There is nothing in nature which is not in man, 
at least in his appreciation. The color of the rose 
and of the violet is in him — the wooing of the fields 
and woods — the sounds of the forests and streams. 

Man is the lazy drone and the busy bee. He is 
the slinking jackal and the dull ox. He is these 
and more. 

He is the volatile cloud and the crimson sunrise. 
He is the impenetrable sky and the starry host. 
He is these and more. 



The Witness to God 29 

He is the plaintive wind and the boisterous 
hurricane, the melodious tune and the raptured 
symphony. He is all these and more. 

Man is so many things that it is hard to realize 
him. To the uninitiated he gives forth a confused 
note. He seems blurred. In nature we can 
more easily separate the attractive from the sordid 
and fix our eyes only on the beautiful. With 
man the dross is often nearest the surface and we 
must penetrate farther to find the gold. 

For him who understands, there is more of 
majesty and eternity in the crowded districts 
of our great cities than there is in the Alps and the 
Rockies. No current of a Nile or an Amazon 
can compare with the wonderful flow of immi- 
grants into our metropolis. 

It becomes something divinely grand to think 
of the hopes and the perplexities, the self-sacrifice 
and the disappointment, the love and the grief 
that sweep in a great tide, surging through our 
welcoming harbor, out from the petty Atlantic, 
entering the ocean of human effort. 

We may look at man at his worst, in the so- 
called slums. And we shall see, in the little family 
circles huddled within narrow walls, the plans of 
the parents, the hopes of the youth, the gladness 
of the children, the wrongs and the fears, the fail- 
ures and the resolves. And to every one of these 
countless circles throughout the day thoughts 
return, and around every centre affections cling. 



30 The Unexplored Self 

The words used in business and work, not hav- 
ing originated under poetic impulse, clumsily ex- 
press the real grace and delicacy there is in the 
commonplace occurrences of living. The words in 
nature have the advantage of having been often 
the creative work of poetic temperaments. But 
even without the power to put it into phrases, a 
little consideration will enable one to feel how 
much more noble and notable is the witness to 
God that is furnished by humanity, than that of 
moon and stars. 

If we trace out all the motives that lead up even 
to a wrong act, somewhere we shall find a divine 
spark which reveals more of divinity than does 
the sweep of the tides or the crash of an avalanche. 



Life in the mountains, or out in nature any- 
where helps us best and witnesses most to God 
when we learn to interpret man through what we 
see. We are then using nature objects as hiero- 
glyphs to write down human ideas. 

The firmly seated hills, quiet and eternal, spell 
stability. The trees, waiting day in and day out, 
give the word patience. The bushes tell of the 
best use of a single talent. The grass, coming 
up indomitable year after year, reiterates persis- 
tence. Upon the soil is written the fact of pre- 
paredness; the earth lies ready for use. The 
sky rises overhead and opens up hope for an 



The Witness to God 31 

issuance to all this life. The clouds either hurry 
on, a lesson of duty, or thick and heavy they speak 
of disguised blessings. The winds whisper or 
shout of the potency of unseen forces. 

All these messages, and many, many more, come 
we say from nature, but note that they come to 
him who already bears the love of humanity on 
his heart and mind. 

It is the thought of humanity that makes elo- 
quent the forces of nature, and it is the love of 
man which makes one ascribe to mindless things 
tongues and a language. It is the kinship of 
man which lets one hear the voices and interpret 
the tidings. 

The help from the beauty of a landscape comes 
provided we rise ourselves, as human beings, to 
the grandeur and exaltation of it. The beauty 
speaks of the true God only as we feel ourselves 
co-partners in the beauty. 

There are times when the self, the man, seems 
to be lost in the presence of nature* While one 
is climbing toward a great view-point, already 
during the approach there come glimpses of the 
panorama that is to appear; as one might mount 
some cathedral steps and hear dimly the sound of 
the music within; but when the final summit is 
attained and all obstacles are suddenly out of the 
way, it is as if one had passed inside the cathedral 
doors and was suddenly merged in the sea of 
music — no longer a human being but become an 



32 The Unexplored Self 

organ note and dissolved in the harmonies that 
floated from nave to dome. 

So the mountain climber looks out over hill 
and valley where everything is on so grand a scale 
that the self is blended into the great whole and 
it is almost with a sigh that the transported soul 
is brought back to its narrow walls and to its 
torpid walk. 

The point we are making is that such transport 
comes from within and that it is the mind which is 
at least in part creator of all that magnificence. 

To him who comes to nature without selection 
and without a key obtained from elsewhere, the 
message is a very disheartening one. As Tennyson 
hears her say : 

I care for nothing, all shall go. 

Thou makest thine appeal to me: 
I bring to life, I bring to death; 
The spirit does but mean the breath: 
I know no more. 

He came to nature for a good in life, and : 

Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravine, shrieked against his creed. 

To him, however, who considers the growing 
lily of the field and the singing birds of the air, 



The Witness to God 33 

in the light of human yearnings, there is encour- 
agement even in lack and longing. 



There are some who find this ceaseless turn- 
ing of Christianity to human life irritating 
and even harrowing. Christianity, in view 
of the constant suffering that there is and of 
the hands that are stretched out for help on all 
sides, seems to them too agitating for healthy 
growth. 

The pagans associated calmness and serenity 
with their worship. In the thoughts of the Greeks 
the home of the gods was upon snow-capped 
Olympus, rising peaceiul, silent, and white above 
the surrounding country. 

In a somewhat similar way elevation and 
aloofness from the pulse of human desire have been 
salient features in all the more advanced pagan 
religions. 

The part that the graceful slopes of snow- 
crowned Fujiyama plays in Japanese art and life 
has often been commented upon. Whatever be 
the scene depicted in the foreground the artist 
likes to outline Fujiyama looming up in the 
background. 

There is thus a majesty and grandeur imparted 
to the most trivial events. Men near at hand 
may be worried, but Fujiyama points the mind 
to the eternal rest. 



34 The Unexplored Self 

They misunderstand Christianity who do not 
perceive the even nobler calm which it brings. 
In the background of every human life and event 
should stand in view, not a snow-topped peak, but 
the figure of the ideal man pointing to God him- 
self; and he who has caught the secret of faith 
will always walk reminded of the presence of him 
whose human interest banishes anxious thought 
for the morrow. 

Behold the fowls of the air; consider the lilies 
of the field ; . . . shall he not much more feed and 
clothe you, oh ye of little faith. Christianity 
validates the value of the individual man. This 
is its directly practical and most important side. 

It also supplements science in explaining the 
mystery of life, and thus indirectly contributes 
to making men appreciate their destiny. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MYSTERY MADE MANIFEST 



TO one who looks upon this existence of ours 
inquiringly the sense of mystery arises. 
Life which appeared natural begins to show itself 
unexplained . Things which appeared common be- 
gin to show themselves extraordinary — the endless 
stretch of space, the countless orders of life, the 
reality of waketime, the oblivion of sleep, the busy 
men and women, the passionless march of events, 
birth, consciousness, and death. 

If one continues to inquire, the strangeness 
takes a deeper and deeper hold and the mystery 
of existence looms up behind every other problem. 
A mystery is not merely something unknown. 
There is involved an uncertainty that paralyzes 
confidence and inhibits effort. In the presence 
of a mystery men are hushed and restrained. 
They grope at best and are held something as 
birds are said to be fixed by the gaze of a serpent. 

Youth starts out boldly to master this mystery, 
but a wider view shows it increasing. What was 

35 



36 The Unexplored Self 

at first the eagerness of curiosity becomes before 
long the hesitation of perplexity. The robust 
spirit of inquiry becomes the halting spirit of 
doubt. So that although youth demands an 
explanation, the counsel of maturity is: "Turn 
away from thinking about it lest you become 
mad — lest you become mad." 

An uncleared mystery brooding over the mind is 
able to take away the zest of endeavor. Some who 
have been bitten by this sense of mystery have 
found the motor impulse gone and themselves 
incapacitated for healthy activity. Turn to what 
labor they will the unsolved enigma of life blocks 
their interests and enervates their purposes. 

A mystery where one's own fate is involved is a 
much more active influence than the mere recog- 
nition of ignorance. It has a directly vitiating ef- 
fect upon conduct. It suspends decisions. Even 
if one resolutely puts it out of his mind and so is 
no longer held motionless in the baleful fascination 
of it, the fact that the problem of existence re- 
mains unsolved tends to make him in his world- 
view indifferent and careless. If he pushes the 
problem aside the incentive of reality is also gone. 

What I mean is that comparatively few may 
permit the presence of the mystery to induce 
despondency, but there are many, perhaps the 
majority of civilized men, who think that the 
mystery is unsolvable, and the fact of this opinion 
prevents any serious thought about destiny. 

We may seem to be tracing current immorality 



The Mystery Made Manifest 37 

and indifference to a rather remote cause. It is 
a cause, however, which is at the very foundation 
of the prevalent scepticism and irreligion. We 
have indeed more kindliness now than ever 
before, but there is little concern as to the basis 
of the kindliness ; and love which has not the sup- 
port of some principle is fickle. 

The evil of an ineffectual struggle with the prob- 
lem of destiny very soon shows itself in the moral 
tone of a community, and we at the present time 
are suffering from just such an evil. 

The conclusions of modern science have tended 
to increase rather than to diminish the enigma of 
our life. There were times when astronomy and 
geology and evolution and physics in turn prom- 
ised explanations — promises unfulfilled. Science 
describes rather than explains events, and the net 
result of failure has been to make the prospect of 
solution more remote than before. 

In fact the revival of science which took place 
during the last century called attention anew to 
the ' ' riddle of the sphinx " and therefore now, even 
though men may cease to bother themselves about 
it, they remember that no solution was forthcoming 
and life stands unjustified; integrity has only the 
sanction of expediency ; and affection is arbitrary. 



The mystery of life has come to be known as 
the riddle of the sphinx, the ancient emblem of 



38 The Unexplored Self 

enigma. There is a peculiar appropriateness in 
this name because the sphinx, the product of a 
rude art, combines the characters of a seer and a 
mute. The eyes, clumsily carved, do not converge 
but lead out along parallel lines and therefore are 
fixed upon eternity. The mouth because of its 
very lifelessness gives no promise of opening and 
the effect of the whole is of portent and silence. 

The soul tragedy when one resolutely but 
ineffectually faces the riddle, is well pictured 
in Thomson's City of Dreadful Night. James 
Thomson was a poet of the second half of the last 
century. He is little heard of to-day, because the 
morbid tone of his verse is rightly felt to be un- 
wholesome, but he was a man of power and insight. 
In one of the visions of his poem he sees, face to 
face, a sphinx in shadow to the breast and an 
angel with drawn sword to strike. Then he 
sinks into a stupor from which a crash awakens 
him, and he sees the angel's wings have fallen and 
only a warrior stands leaning on his sword still 
facing the unchanged sphinx. Again the stupor 
and again the crash, and this time the sword is 
broken and a man stands with his hands raised 
in entreaty beneath the implacable gaze. The 
crash which awakens the poet the last time shows 
a body fallen between the monster's feet and still 
ignored by the level eyes as changeless as life's 
laws. 

The poem doubtless represents an extreme 
instance, but the feeling is general among us that 



The Mystery Made Manifest 39 

the mystery remains unsolved, and this general 
feeling undermines faith in the value of life and 
restrains zeal for the purpose of life. Our genera- 
tion is active but active in a superficial way with 
little hope of any larger meaning in the activity. 

It is for this reason that the phase of the Gospel 
taken up in our subject is of vital social importance 
and the solution of Christianity if it is valid is 
redemptive as well as illuminating. 



The Bible brings to the mystery of this life of 
ours terms of a divine purpose and a divine plan, 
that is, the higher is used to interpret the lower. 
There are some problems that may be propounded 
in arithmetic but are insoluble till one applies 
the forms of algebra. 

If there were here a book written in cipher, it 
would be one thing to examine it mechanically and 
to remain only with the composition of the paper, 
the manner of binding, the size and shapes of the 
marks; and it would be quite another thing if 
some one who understood should put the marks 
together into words and so read out the meaning 
and give the message. 

Out of the loot of a Greek cathedral I once 
picked up what I afterwards learned was a music 
book with the peculiar Greek musical notation. I 
can imagine a group of scholars setting themselves, 
without any clue, to investigate the notation. 



40 The Unexplored Self 

They would doubtless call attention to many 
laws of agreement. They might even write a 
volume or two describing the relations of the 
symbols, their various positions, the recurrence 
of periods, the repetition of certain strokes. 
Very different would be their understanding of the 
system if some one recognized the music and 
interpreted the marks into song. 

A sheet of bars and notes can be studied as a 
bit of geometry and spacing. That will be one 
thing. It will be something entirely different 
when the sheet is appreciated as containing a 
succession of harmonies. 

It is in this respect that the manifestation of the 
mystery of existence made by religion differs from 
the descriptions of science. Religion uses terms 
of value and worth in the thought of a larger 
design or purpose. The meaning of life cannot 
be expressed in mechanical terms but it can be 
interpreted in terms of a great good. 



Now the Christian revelation of the mystery is 
different from other theologizing because Christ 
did not improvise an external God with an alien 
purpose ; he found in himself the divine of which 
he spoke. He was no mystic. He took the 
love of righteousness and nobility which he 
found in himself as the clue to solve the worth 
of the wider experience. Thus he knew him- 



The Mystery Made Manifest 41 

self forever linked to the divine and recognized 
his father God. 

This finding of the divine in his own personality 
validates Christ's solution and marks his great 
advance over the Old Testament. Some of the 
older moralists had come to see in conscience an 
outside God speaking with a still small voice, but 
there remained the chasm between humanity and 
deity, between the self and the voice. Christ af- 
firmed this voice to be the essential part of the 
self. The divine yearning, the aspiration, the di- 
vine flame, he said is the most real self. To reach 
the divine he did not go outside of his own experi- 
ence and therefore his witness is true. What was 
highest in himself he recognized as the divine 
expression and he used this to interpret the whole 
of life. 

With terms of modern psychology we would 
say that the value part in the individual experience 
must be retained as the necessary interpretant for 
any meaning in the whole. Christ did not use the 
vocabulary of modern psychology, but for every 
seeker of the meaning in life he has established the 
fact that the meaning of the whole cannot be 
dissociated from the meaning of the individual. 

Christ's manifestation of the purpose of life 
is valid because the divinity which he reveals is not 
the fanciful personifications of mythology; it is 
not the superstitious ignorance of idolatry — it is 
valid because it results from an insight into the 
essential self. Moreover he gave such an expres- 



42 The Unexplored Self 

sion of the divine essential self that his personality 
stands unique in history. 



It may help our thought to say that men's bodies 
are like so many windows through each one of 
which, however shaped and colored and however 
small, purposiveness, that is, God himself is 
looking out. Christ taught men to look for this 
light, to find God in themselves, and in his own 
spirit showed what we must look for. 

As evangelical Christians we are agreed in insist- 
ing on the divinity of Christ. In whatever way we 
may further elucidate this theorem, there must fol- 
low from it, as an immediate corollary, the divinity 
of man: so that no matter how low a man has 
fallen, he shall be able when he comes to himself, 
to see God there, to recognize the larger worth in 
himself, and thus be awakened to his true life. 

When he comes to himself — that is the secret 
of Christ's method. Show a man his real self, and 
it is showing him the source of meaning, it is 
bringing him to God. 

When he comes to himself — that is the phrase 
which is used of the Prodigal Son. When he came 
to himself was the time that he began to see true 
values. 

Men go about in life busily or aimlessly. They 
come to this object or that object and linger or 
pass on. Once in a while they come across them- 



The Mystery Made Manifest 43 

selves. That is the time to stop. It is rather a 
startling experience in one's wanderings to come 
to himself. A man is inclined to exclaim in sur- 
prise, Why here is myself. 

The plea of Christianity is, do not pass on at 
such a moment. Give up the errand you were 
running, however urgent it may seem. It is of 
first importance to get acquainted with the self 
for it is there that one is to look for the Christ 
spirit and so to see God. 

Not in the sunset, not in the mountain view, 
not in the kindly deed is the revelation ; these may 
be the occasions ; but it is in the vision of the best 
self whence a man may venture to proclaim God as 
his father. Not in the heights nor depths is God 
found ; the worth of life is not discovered by the 
telescope nor the microscope; God, the worth of 
life is to be found in the unexplored self. Let 
one feel the reality of affection and the inde- 
structibility of love and he will have discovered 
the interpretant of all things. 

This makes Christianity a matter of personal 
experience. Not something accepted on the 
word of another. A man, therefore, in a real way 
becomes a Christian for he finds Christ and God 
as his own best self. 



We may have seemed in the last few sentences 
to have been travelling off from the beaten track, 



44 The Unexplored Self 

but the idea we have reached is one easily to 
be understood, whether accepted or not. The 
mystery that hath been hidden from ages and 
generations is made manifest when a divinity is 
appreciated in man. 

The divinity of man — it is a startling doctrine, 
one which by its very daring excites opposition, 
and a part of the Church has not yet shown itself 
ready to affirm it. The Church has had such a 
struggle in maintaining the divinity of Christ that 
there is naturally hesitation in proclaiming as 
included in that belief, as a corollary of that 
belief, the divinity of man. Many are pausing 
before the declaration, though at the expense of 
leaving the divinity of Christ a remote truth. 

It is a declaration big with possibilities and 
difficulties. It involves a re-adjustment of argu- 
ments and emphasis. Even though the unique- 
ness of Christ's personality is not affected, there 
is in some quarters hesitation. The doctrine 
demands so much more unselfishness and so much 
more generosity than even the revolutionary doc- 
trines of the freedom of man, and the equality of 
man, and the fraternity of man, that the cost to 
personal ease and comfort must be counted. 

In maintaining the divinity of man there will 
be no support from the world of the miraculous, 
no argument from man's sinlessness, no authority 
of undisputed proof-texts. Disease, selfishness, 
cowardice, meanness, must be recognized and yet 
the belief maintained. Many are asking is it 



The Mystery Made Manifest 45 

possible? The shiftless man, the drunkard, the 
cruel man, the spiteful man, the unprincipled 
man — can it be said that they are divine, children 
of God? 

Is it not enough to say, that the divinity is 
merely potential, something that is to be acquired? 
Need we understand that there is something of 
divinity even in the lowest? 

More and more clearly is the study of Christ's 
teaching making it appear that it was the divinity 
of man as man that he announced. More and 
more is his teaching understood that the lost sheep 
could never cease to belong to the shepherd, that 
the wayward son could never cease to be the son 
of his father, that the publicans and sinners were 
still of the family of God, that God breathed 
into man the breath of life and that the divine 
inbreathing forever animates even the lowest of 
men, whether low because the manhood is just 
beginning or because the manhood has become 
diseased, whether the man is a toddling savage 
or a tumbled saint. 

This then is the manifestation : that the longing 
for better things, for best things, which every man 
has, is to be interpreted as guaranteeing the 
reality and eternity of value, is to be interpreted 
in divine terms as a direct relation to the source 
and end of all worths. 

After accepting the Christian revelation, we still 
remain in the presence of the unknown, yes the 
great unknown, but the oppressiveness of fore- 



46 The Unexplored Self 

boding is taken away, the halting sense of mystery 
is gone, and there is incentive to advance the 
good. The attitude is that of a child who finds 
naught but delight in the many strange and new 
things, because the child in his obedience trusts 
the love of the parent. 

For those who have caught a hint of the great 
purpose that is being worked out in life, the 
recognition of ignorance is only a stimulus to 
activity because there is confidence in the per- 
manence of achievement. In a vital way men 
feel the incomparable value of the individual 
soul, primitive, cultured, or degenerate, and this 
is the essence of Christianity. 



CHAPTER V 

INCARNATION 



THERE have been some phrases in the Bible 
which have been like the newspaper crop 
and produce reports to the old-fashioned farmer. 
He assumes that some one understands them but 
himself pays them no attention. 

The word made flesh is one of these phrases. 
The theologian who has been regarded as a sort 
of operator in futures was supposed to be inter- 
ested in it but to the common tiller of the ground 
it was remote. 

The time has come, however, when religious 
knowledge is no longer relegated to the specialist. 
The layman is not satisfied to be in ignorance as to 
the more distant trends. Matters that touch the 
highest worth of life are important enough for the 
ordinary earner to know, and life's husbandmen 
are seeking to be informed as to the real needs 
and the real values. 

This accounts in part for the decadence of 
theology at the same time that there is a 

47 



48 The Unexplored Self 

new interest in the Bible and in the life of 
Christ. 

It is in line with the desire to find the secret of the 
New Testament influence that some of its phrases 
are being taken from the realm of metaphysics and 
are being recognized as eminently practical. 

Thus our subject: The Word Made Flesh, 
does not need to take a man, as it would have 
taken him twenty -five years ago, into speculations 
as to the prenatal relations of Christ to God, but 
it states a great factor in which Christianity is 
different from other systems. 



Speculation and much that passes by the name 
of religion and much that has called itself Chris- 
tianity has remained in the world of the word, 
in the thought world. True Christianity insists 
that the word be made flesh. 

It is not enough to have beautiful thoughts, 
to be comforted with the visions of) bliss, to lose 
one's self in divine ecstasy, to lay hold of the 
infinite — these thoughts, these visions, this con- 
templation must be made into concrete reality. 
The divine must become incarnate. 

This is a far more important and more difficult 
thing than many seem to think. 

It is easy, for instance, to plan a splendid 
picture, to imagine the various groupings and the 



Incarnation 49 

tints, but it is something entirely different to 
put the picture on a canvas. The veriest tyro 
can criticise a painting as falling short of the ideal. 
Only the master knows how far it is from an ideal 
to a framed product on the wall. 

Or again, many harbor the belief that they can 
write stories. They read the poor stuff that often 
comes out in print and are sure that they can do 
better. They conceive a plot and already in 
their minds the characters begin to live. The 
whole thing begins to take on, in their thought, 
the form of a masterpiece, but when they sit 
down to transcribe upon paper that vivacity and 
action, that imagination and thrilling interest, 
the result is strangely vapid and dull. Perhaps 
they are self-deceived long enough to read their 
story to a friend. Then, at least if the friend be a 
true one, they realize what a long step, no not a 
step, what a long journey it is from the idea to the 
accepted production. 

A striking exemplification of the difference 
between the idea and its realization, the word and 
the flesh, is found in two contrasting incidents 
from the familiar story of Jacob's life. At the 
beginning of his career his pathway appeared the 
vision of a ladder set up from earth to heaven and 
he could imagine himself a messenger of God, 
going up and down on the errands of the Almighty. 
Everything looked bright and easy. His mission 
beckoned him to hurry on. Duty seemed alluring 



50 The Unexplored Self 

and delightful. The world lay before him ready 
to be entered and occupied. Life was a gateway 
to paradise. Surely this is the gate of heaven, 
he exclaimed. 

Twenty-one years later the vision had passed 
away and he was in touch with real life. This 
time there was no gateway opening up to paradise, 
but darkness and danger ahead; no angels beck- 
oning him but an adversary resisting him ; no easy 
dreaming but an all-night wrestling. 

These two incidents picture the difference be- 
tween the sentiment and the accomplishment, 
between the vision and the touch. Youth sees 
God calling him. The adult finds God opposing 
him, where only out of the opposition comes the 
blessing. 



Even in this practical age there is an inclination 
both within and without the Church to rest satis- 
fied with the kindly feeling, with the spiritual 
visions, with the idea, with the word. In Chris- 
tianity, however, to have called Lord, Lord, and 
to have well-wished the poor and needy is not 
enough. The kindly feeling must have become 
deeds, the vision must have become a wrestling and 
the idea actual. 

It is comparatively easy to say what the Church 
should be and should do. The Church at the pres- 
ent time is being subjected to a great deal of 



Incarnation 51 

kindly and unkindly criticism. I count among 
my friends many who stand aloof from the Church 
and yet favor it with much gratuitous advice. 
The Church should be a social power, they say, 
and without social cleavages. 

But let such critics turn their sentiments into 
actuality ; let them work in an organization where 
elbow touches elbow without selection; let them 
go ahead and begin to help make the Church 
patterned in its spirit after the very Christ, and 
they will find human nature not so tractable as 
they had supposed. 

It is easy to criticise reformers and to point out 
their mistakes but let one attempt a reform him- 
self, whether in politics or in social conditions 
or in anything else, and he will afterward speak 
more sympathetically of the failures of others. 
To be thrilled with a thought is one thing, to 
realize that thought in forms or legislation or 
societies is a very different thing. 

Just now there are many cults that have a vogue, 
especially among the daintier natures, because 
they remain in the less contaminated atmosphere 
of mentality. The study of the mind has opened 
up a new universe much less obstinate and vulgar 
than the common universe of matter. 

This new universe of mind is light and airy. 
It contains all the variety of the material world 
but with an infinite variety of its own. In it 
one is not weighted down to earth for he may 



52 The Unexplored Self 

travel from star to star and through the aeons 
like a flash. He may people it with geniuses or 
fairies at will. He may be a genius in it himself 
and govern with a power like that of the primeval 
spirit of God, which said : Let there be, and there 
was. 

These cults which abide in the realm of thought 
deck themselves with the nomenclature of philos- 
ophy or of oriental religions, or they may even call 
themselves Christian and become pietistic, mystic. 

It is all attractive and simple. No hint of yokes, 
much less of crosses, till suddenly this heavy, 
earthy world of ours obtrudes its demands, its 
limits, and the devotee is brought to the ground 
with a thud. 

There is a different law in the members warring 
against the law of the mind and bringing a man into 
captivity so that with the mind indeed he serves 
the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin. 
The mind is wonderful but its constructions are 
valid only as we are successful in giving them a 
body, in making them into bone and flesh. 



There is a good analogy between the transform- 
ing of thought into result and the transforming of 
water into horse-power and work. We are told 
by scientists that in order to transform water 
which has been heated to the temperature of 
212 degrees, into steam which shall also be 212 



Incarnation 53 

degrees there is required an additional 1700 de- 
grees of heat. I do not remember whether it 
is exactly 1700 degrees but in any case an enormous 
amount of surplus heat is required to convert 
water already at the boiling point into steam. 
We are told that this great amount of heat becomes 
latent, hidden, not to be discovered by thermal 
measurement. All this means that it calls for a 
comparatively small amount of fire to heat water 
from the freezing point up to the point of work, but 
then there is a call for a large plus, a sudden 
increment before the previous heat is at all avail- 
able to drive a piston. 

It is like this with the conversion of mental 
energy into deeds. The mind may be warmed 
to the point of making plans. It may make near 
choices. It may have all the thermal emotions 
of heroism and kindliness. Its zeal may be at the 
top mark of measurement. The eyes may fill 
with tears and the pulse throb with sympathy, 
and yet the step or rather the journey from such 
a condition of mind to the actuality of performance 
is a long one, for it requires 1700 times 1700 de- 
grees of added heat to pass from the vision to the 
fulfilment. 

A huge tank of water which has reached 212 
degrees Fahrenheit is powerless to start a wheel. 
So it is with much religious zeal. 

Those who pay attention to the great mass of 
warmed mentality are often disappointed at the 
little advance which the world is making, but they 



54 The Unexplored Self 

have failed to appreciate the overplus of latent 
spiritual energy that is lost to sight when promise 
becomes fruition. 



The recognition that in Christianity the word 
is to become flesh is important for those who have 
mistaken theology for Christianity. There are 
many still among us who confuse skill in religi- 
ous speculation with Christianity. They compile 
sentences into formulas and make those the test 
of discipleship. It is a useless test and misleads 
men from the true meaning of the Incarnation, 
in carna, making into flesh. 

Our subject is important also for those who 
have been attracted by religions which are satisfied 
to dwell in the world of thought — the world out 
of which the limping life of actuality may be 
excluded. There are many such who begin to 
plume themselves on the greater depth of their 
new religious insight. 

Though one, however, understands all knowl- 
edge and all mysteries and is not the good 
Samaritan, it is nothing. 

Our subject is specially important for those 
who are discouraged by their own difficulty in 
putting into deeds what is in their minds. Days 
started with the best of resolves, when looked at 
in retrospect, have little influenced the march of 



Incarnation 55 

events. The pettiness of the accomplishment 
compared with the grandeur of the anticipation 
is one of the primer lessons of life. It is something 
to realize that a very little advance means a great, 
great deal. 

Those who criticise existing institutions and 
organizations would do well themselves to attempt 
betterments. The Church is surfeited with talk 
and speculation and advice. What it needs is 
examples, experiments, laboratories, demonstra- 
tions. Or rather it needs ropes and pulley -blocks, 
pick-axes and shovels. Christianity is not some- 
thing apart to be housed in universities and 
assembling of saints. It is to be classed among 
the industrial plants. It is productive like the 
soil. Its place is in the home, on the street, in 
the office, in the shop, for a distinctive feature 
of it is the word made flesh. 

This practical consideration of the word made 
flesh needs to be completed of course by a consider- 
ation which has a further reach. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DIVINE INCARNATION 



THE final aim of art is to reveal the attractive- 
ness of personality. Art makes visible the 
spirit of the artist. 

When a little whirl of wind gathers together dust 
and leaves and lifts them into a fitful column, 
the leaves and dust express the motion of the air, 
which would otherwise be unobserved. The 
clouds streaking the sky or piled in thick masses 
are incarnations of movements which would else 
be unnoticed. 

The purpose of art is to make visible that most 
evanescent of forces, the human. What the dust 
and leaves do for the whirl of wind, what the 
clouds do for the movements and temperature of 
the air, productions of art do for the human 
spirit. 

The colors and lines on a canvas, the form of the 
marble or bronze, the harmonies in music, the 
rhythm and imagination in poetry are artistic 
in so far as they bring to view that most wonder- 

56 



The Divine Incarnation 57 

ful of nature's products, the soul of the artist, the 
soul beautiful. 

The painting of a cluster of roses is more beauti- 
ful artistically than the roses themselves. This 
is not because the colors from the palette can 
hope to vie with nature's tints, not because the 
painted textures can hope to compete with the 
softness of the real petals or with the delicacy of 
the real leaves, but because in the painting we 
have a picture, not so much of the roses, as a 
picture of the person who painted them. It is 
not a photographer's likeness; it is a picture of the 
inner person. 

Artistically the picture is important because it 
shows us the trained hand of the painter, his truth- 
ful mind, his perseverance in learning, his sym- 
pathy with beauty, his love of production. 

The still life depicted by the brush depicts also 
the active life of the artist himself. It is a window 
opening into the attractive mind of him who 
handled the brush. 



A painter's success is not in his reproducing 
nature but in his successful portrayal of his own 
personality. 

Many go into a museum of art and wonder why 
some insignificant looking things are accounted 
masterpieces while other striking and suggestive 



58 The Unexplored Self 

paintings are ranked low in the scale. It makes 
one who is sensitive as to revealing his ignorance, 
meek and dumb when the art expert spurns inter- 
esting canvases and pauses to wax eloquent over 
some stupid landscape. The difference in apprecia- 
tion is not due so much to difference of tastes as 
to knowledge of the further things for which the 
painting stands. 

As a novice I go into an art gallery and see only 
the representations of meadows, of objects, of 
events. It requires some familiarity with art 
methods and with art history to see in the paintings 
the pictures of the minds and hearts of those who 
produced the works. 

One who realizes that he is looking not so much 
at the figure of a man, hung upon the wall, as at 
the sympathetic personality of the creator of the 
work judges from a wholly different standpoint. 
He is able to overlook bad grouping and crude 
drawing if he knows that he is face to face with 
the soul of one who is, nevertheless, sincere and 
noble. 

Many of the old masterpieces do indeed look 
grotesque compared with the productions of even 
inferior modern painters. Yet he who understands 
the history of art, and the difficulties of training 
which were overcome, sees the artistic superiority. 

A painter then not merely reduplicates a scene 
but he gives a view of the stretches of scenery 
inside of his own mind. The outward vista we 



The Divine Incarnation 59 

can see for ourselves; his painting will give us a 
more wonderful inward vista which would else 
be to us invisible. His medium may be marble, 
or colors on canvas, or words, or music. What 
makes him an artist is his success in expressing 
his best self through that medium. 

There is put upon the canvas a bit of the spirit 
world. The sculptor brings out of the stone a 
replica of his own penetration and ideals. The 
poet allows a look into his own soul. 



This distinction between artistic and natural 
beauty is of great importance of course for an 
understanding of art. It becomes of humanita- 
rian interest when it is realized that one can use 
among the varying mediums for expressing his 
personality, that most wonderful medium of all, 
the human character. 

This medium has a great fixity of its own and 
is at the same time strangely plastic. What I 
mean is that just as marble may be used to express 
some of the ideal that is in the artist's mind, so 
human character may be shaped by some great 
leader of men according to forms of his own visions, 
and a series of generations may have painted upon 
them the personality of a Napoleon, of a Luther, 
or of a Saint Francis. 

So a teacher in a school may be regarded as a 
painter and the class will be a canvas stretched 



60 The Unexplored Self 

before him. He does not take facts from a book 
and transfer them into the minds of the pupils. 
He does not so much draw out the latent person- 
alities of the scholars. If we regard the teacher as 
a sculptor, the lessons will be the chisel and mallet 
to hew and sculpt the personalities of the scholars 
somewhat into the ideals that constitute his own 
mind, or the ideals of other teachers. At the 
end of a year he should not be surprised to see 
the shapes of these ideals visible in the characters 
of the class. And others also, in seeing the 
changed characters of the pupils, should obtain a 
view of some phases of the teacher's personality, 
his outlook, his vigor, his hope, his sincerity, his 
sympathy. 

A great educator is to be classed among the 
Michael Angelos, the Raphaels, the Beethovens, 
whose personalities are to be found not only in 
their own productions but also in the succession 
of sculptors, painters, and musicians who have 
been influenced by them. 

There is no medium that is more worth working 
with, more capable of variety, more adequate to 
express the creative soul, the soul of a master, 
than human nature itself. 



We have come rather a long way about to reach 
the Christian bearing of our subject, but when it 
is thoroughly understood that the essential self 



The Divine Incarnation 61 

of the artist is to be seen in the statues which he 
has created, the right approach has been gained 
for discovering the true personality of Christ, for 
appreciating his method of self-expression, and 
for understanding the method of Christianity. 
Christ incarnated the Spirit of God and was him- 
self the master Sculptor of Souls. 

The Gospel was a personal influence and not a 
system of learning. The technique of Christianity 
is of touch to mould, not of precept to point. 

Christ depended on his words to do his work 
just as little as a painter depends upon his art 
lectures to express his ideas of beauty. The 
artist knows how much more effective a medium 
is to be found in colors and canvas. 

The poetic impulse is imparted by the inspiration 
of poetic ideals and not by instruction in scansion. 
So Christ depended on the transformed lives of 
his disciples to continue his own incarnation of the 
divine. As he was the purpose of the world made 
flesh, so his medium was men and women — men 
and women whom through contact and not 
through maxims he made over to conform to the 
purpose of life. 

This brings us to the secret of Christian propa- 
ganda. God is revealed not in lectures but in 
lives. The disciples are an exhibit from the 
workshop, from the atelier of the master. 

Compared with such an exhibit pages of de- 
scription or of teaching are little significant. Those 



62 The Unexplored Self 

who looked were able to see not merely Peter and 
John but the spirit of Jesus which had made Peter 
and John into new creatures, in his own likeness, 
far more different from the original Peter and John 
than the statue is from the original rough marble. 
We are told that men took note of Peter and 
John that they had been with Christ; they saw 
that they had been conformed to the image of 
him who dwelt in them, who called himself in 
turn the son of God, whose aim was to be in his 
disciples as his father was in him. 



It is this secret of personality which marks the 
distinction of the Christian system and makes 
faith in Christ more regenerative than acceptance 
of his moral teachings. It makes love to Christ 
the first step in the new life. 

It makes the matter of the divine incarnation 
primary. It validates the idea of the new Adam, 
for Christ became the spiritual progenitor as 
Adam had been the physical. 

It justifies the question: Have I been so 
long with you and yet how sayest thou, show 
us the father? The disciples caught the idea and 
used it, as the quotations above show, and this 
may account in part for their great success as 
compared with our slight success. They did not 
preach Christianity, but they presented Christ. 



The Divine Incarnation 63 

They presented him, and here is the point, in their 
own changed lives, for men took note of them 
that they had been with Christ. 

Men began to realize, not through hearsay, 
but through the quickened pulse that ran through 
their own veins, that it was open to them to bear 
the image of the heavenly. 



Any one who has only read the New Testament 
description of Christ has yet to learn of him along 
the approach which gives the deeper insight. 
The master is little revealed in his biography. 
He is more fully revealed in his works, in his 
productions; and the largest source for external 
information about Christ is to be found in the 
history which his inspiration has produced. 

Christ is to be studied in detail in the personali- 
ties that express his spirit, for whom his flesh 
has been food and his blood drink. 

As the Christ of service and love reveals the di- 
vine spirit and purpose, so it is the best in Chris- 
tendom that completes the revelation of the Christ 
of Palestine. It is therefore the Christ of the 
world's experience and of the individual experience 
even more than the Jesus of the f our Gospels that 
portrays the image of the heavenly. 

When the argument of Christianity is, Take note 
of these men that they are living the best purpose 
in life, then will Christ re-enter upon his work. 



64 The Unexplored Self 

There are too many lectures on art. There is 
needed faithful copying of the masterpieces under 
the thrill of the genius of the master. 

We said that history was the largest source for 
external information as to the personality of 
Christ. There is, of course, the reproduction of 
a master in the pupil's own growth and likings, 
in his own development, and this is for him, of all 
sources of insight into the master's spirit, the most 
immediate. 

A man may shut his eyes and separated from 
the world of sight wander about in a world of 
thought and ideas. As he goes here and there 
he finds centres that are sensuous and bestial, he 
finds centres that are lazy and careless, he finds 
centres that are playful and centres that are serious. 
In every such microcosm there is a centre that 
corresponds to the spirit of Christ. It may be 
rarely encountered, but every man, ruffian and 
debauchee even, has such a centre. We have 
already referred to this in a previous chapter. 

The Christian teaching is that that centre is 
the truest self and is at the same time the God 
nature in the man. In this way the Christ pattern 
shows the man his own self, and shows him God. 
The Christ of history is necessary, for without 
him the Christ of experience would not be called 
to the attention; but inversely the Christ of 
experience gives an immediate insight into the 
Christ of history and enables the fact of the 



The Divine Incarnation 65 

divine incarnation to be a matter of direct 
knowledge. 

A man therefore sees, at the same time, God, 
himself, and the spirit of Christ, and these three 
are one. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE LIVING CHRIST 



THE title of the last book in the Bible is usually 
understood to mean a disclosure. The 
Book of Revelation, of Disclosure — the title is 
like a herald's trumpet, preparing for approaching 
information. It commands attention like the 
Oyez, Oyez, — Hear ye, Hear ye, of an opening 
tribunal. A disclosure is always attractive. The 
town-crier always has an audience. The news- 
paper with promising headlines does not fail to 
find buyers in plenty. Above all, men wish to 
know things to come, secrets of the future. 

Most people therefore, understanding the title 
of the last book in the Bible in this sense, are 
disappointed in what they find. They discover 
good counsel, bejewelled verses, charming and 
comforting sections, but they feel that there has 
been no actual revelation such as the title had led 
them to expect. The book seems to be not en- 
tirely reliable as a horoscope of the future. 

We all expect right to triumph, grief to be 
66 



The Living Christ 67 

assuaged, and evil to be overthrown. But men 
are inclined to question whether the final form of 
this consummation becomes clearer to them from 
reading the book. The pictures are more fanciful 
than accurate. In looking through the chapters 
for a disclosure of the things that are to occur, they 
find more to bewilder than to enlighten. The 
imagery and symbolism are not only crude but con- 
fusing. In quick succession the scenes are changed 
until every element of consistency or harmony is 
destroyed. As soon as men attempt a rational 
interpretation of the words in any direction, the 
reasoning is balked and they give up the expecta- 
tion of finding a unity or a message in the book as 
a whole. It appears to be made up of short sec- 
tions of inspiration and ecstasy strangely inter- 
mixed with allusions that may have been valuable 
once but are valueless to-day. 

To obtain a meaning from the book as a whole 
seems to be a hopeless if not a spendthrift under- 
taking. Some one has said that the book, if it did 
not find one crazy, left him so. Save in detached 
sections, the book seems to disclose little that is 
available for modern purposes. Men are satisfied 
to read enough to appease their curiosity and they 
pass over the expectation of revelation to dabblers 
in the occult. 

It is the dabblers in the occult who almost alone 
to-day take the book as a whole seriously. The 
strange and even mischievous uses that have been 
made of its prophecies are among the curiosities of 



68 The Unexplored Self 

abnormal psychology. The variety and ingenu- 
ity of the interpretations are without parallel in 
the history of religious insanity. There have 
never been wanting minds that could wriggle 
millenniums out of times, a time and half a time, 
or out of a repetitious digit. 

The discovery in the last few years of several 
strikingly similar disclosures which are purely 
Jewish political writings, like the Assumption of 
Moses or the Book of Enoch, has contributed to 
the lessened valuation. The Roman martyr 
period is past. The emperor-worship is only of 
historical interest. Rome is no longer the centre 
of the world. In the descriptions, there is, there- 
fore, it is thought, no relevancy that need be 
reckoned with to-day* 



It is in part because of this general feeling that I 
would draw attention to the opening words of the 
book, and call our subject, The Living Christ. 
The spirit of the book is essential to a proper 
understanding of Christianity. 

We have been long familiar with the presenta- 
tions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Here, 
there is, however, given, as complementary to 
them, this fifth presentation. The opening words 
may be translated as the Revelation of Jesus 
Christ, the Disclosure of Jesus Christ, or the 
Manifestation of Jesus Christ. In whatever way 



The Living Christ 69 

the words be taken, they indicate the purpose 
of the book to be an account of Christ, and by 
reading on we find it to be an account of Christ 
in relation to world movements. 

The title, it is true, says, the Revelation of John. 
But the title, like all the titles in the New Testa- 
ment, was added long afterward, and in this case 
has unintentionally made men mistake the pur- 
pose of the writing. It is a revelation of Christ 
and this is the fact which gives the permanent 
value to the book as a whole. The important 
thing, therefore, is not the account of contempo- 
rary cruelties or of judgment-day events, but the 
new view of Christ and Christianity that is made 
possible upon the background of world-embracing 
occurrences. 

The pictures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John 
are painted upon simple canvas. The panoramas 
in the Revelation are as if the artist had taken 
some great crag and with an enormous brush had 
sketched upon it the heroic labors of a demi-god, 
utilizing the natural cracks and colors to supple- 
ment his own art. 

The first four Gospels give a life of the Christ of 
Palestine. This Fifth Gospel gives Christ's career 
upon the background of clashing arms and shout- 
ing hosts. It is the Christ of the four ends of the 
earth; the Christ of the militant kingdom and of 
the kingdom of peace; the Christ of pestilence 
and disaster, of health and blessedness. 

The result is, in a way, a more prophetic picture 



70 The Unexplored Self 

than that of the four earlier Gospels. It is a 
picture of the Christ warring with the powers of 
evil and supported by the powers of good. It is 
the Christ of Christian history and of soul experi- 
ence, the one known to every man personally 
and at first hand. The writer seized upon the 
strangely vigorous apocalyptic material and used 
it to present a culminating idea of the Christ. 
Here the movements are not along highways and 
streets but unlocalized in the indefinite and vast 
ranges of the mind, among the timeless stars and on 
unlimited stretches of mountain and plain. Even 
when we think of the conflict as going on within a 
particular soul, it is in the soul in its eternal 
relations, with the firmament above and the abyss 
below, where the beginnings and the endings 
seem side by side. 

If one could take a lantern slide and, with a 
powerful enough light, throw a picture upon the 
clouds, and if he could add the ability to dispose 
the clouds so that they should heighten the effect, 
he would begin to understand the manner of the 
Fifth Gospel. 

It is as if a sculptor, instead of taking plain mar- 
ble for his ideal portrait, should take the gnarled 
oak and skilfully adapt the markings of the wood 
to blend and co-operate with his own conception. 
The sculptor would be sadly disappointed were 
we to approach his result with a magnif ying-glass 
to count the rings and to study the knots and the 
turns and so miss the purpose of his work. 



The Living Christ 71 

The warfare, the prodigies, the emperors, the 
cities, are a necessary part of the work but not by 
themselves. There is no harm in trying to trace 
the symbolism of the portents, but for the Chris- 
tian, the principal thing is the enlarged picture of 
Christ that appears — the picture, not as some 
have thought, of the glorified Christ, or of the 
ascended Christ, or of the end of the world, but 
a picture of the Christ of history, the Christ of 
to-day. The portrait is as necessary as it is true. 
It is the completion of the portrait of the Christ of 
Palestine. 

On the cross his kingship was written in Hebrew 
and in Latin and in Greek. The sign thus already 
pointed to the larger world in which the Fifth 
Gospel shows him working among the nations and 
in the soul struggles. 



There are many respects in which the Revela- 
tion might be regarded as an expression of the 
great thought contained in Prometheus Unbound. 
It is the inspired narrative of the Christ Unbound, 
the Christ after the irons that bound his arms had 
been removed, in his conflict with the oppressor of 
mankind and in his final victory. As a Shelley 
took the background of a Greek religion on which 
to portray his message of the grandeur of the 
typical man, so the inspired Christian writer used 
the background of Jewish religion to portray the 



72 The Unexplored Self 

grandeur of the son of man, the Lamb slain from 
the foundation of the world, the Saviour of men in 
unremitting opposition to evil, and the constantly 
recurring victory when one among the wingless 
crawling hours has dragged the ancient serpent 
forth to be cast into the lake of fire. 

I have been interested in tracing the places 
where Shelley, in his Prometheus Unbound, has 
been influenced by the Biblical narration of the 
Christ Unbound, the Released, the Unfettered. 
The background is not that of Greek religion but 
Christian. The hero has much of Christ and little 
of Prometheus. 

In the suffering of the Titanic champion of 
humanity nailed to the cliff we may see parallelisms 
to the crucifixion again and again. In Shelley it 
is the demi-gorgon who, with no help from Prome- 
theus, finally overthrows the adversary of man, 
and even here the conflict is a short and one-sided 
one. Revelation is much truer both in respect 
to the continued leadership of Christ and also 
in respect to the severity and continuance of the 
warfare. 

Those who have fought with clenched fists 
against temptation, those who have wrestled with 
weakness, those who have been harrowed by 
anxiety, those who have stood valiant in the bat- 
tles against corruption, they all know that the 
extravagant fantasies of a Jewish apocalypse 
become sober reality when used as a background 
for the Christian warfare. 



The Living Christ 73 

The technique of the Revelation is certainly 
strange. It is one of the first principles of inter- 
pretation, however, that strange technique is not 
to distract one from seeing the essential power and 
nobility of a production. Had the author been 
writing to-day he might possibly have regarded 
structure more. He might possibly have substi- 
tuted the crashing of banks for the earthquakes, 
financial panics for the battles, newspaper extras 
for the trumpet proclamations, but the representa- 
tion of the Christ Unbound would have remained, 
in its essentials, unaltered. 



In order adequately to exhibit the Christ of the 
four ends of the earth, requisition is made upon all 
that is wonderful and potent. 

On the one hand we have the sharp two-edged 
sword, the keys of death and hell, lightnings and 
thunders, hail and fire mingled with blood, rivers 
and floods, beasts and monsters, the blackened 
sun, the stars cast like unripe figs, the heavens 
rolled up as a scroll, mountains torn from their 
anchorages, the opened pit of the abyss, the smoke 
darkening the air and producing locusts as scor- 
pions. We have the plagues and torments, the 
pain of travail and the agony of scorching heat, 
the sickle of disease and the wine-press of blood, 
drought and overthrow. We have all the engin- 
ery of war, the terrors by day and the horrors by 



74 The Unexplored Self 

night, the mystery of the stars and the stillness of 
heavenly silence. 

On the other hand we have the metals gleaming 
as though in a furnace, the sea of glass like unto 
crystal, the sun shining in his strength, the sound 
of many rushing waters, the whiteness of snow, the 
flames of fire, rainbows and all the radiant jewels, 
the white stone with the inly locked secret of the 
new name, the tree of life, and the diadems of suc- 
cess. We have the multitude of the heavenly 
host, ten thousand times ten thousand and thou- 
sands of thousands, music and singing, shouts and 
hallelujahs, songs and choruses, feasts and rejoic- 
ings, glory and praise, ecstasy and joy. Thus is 
heaven and earth exhausted, almost, in the effort 
to describe the wider bearings of the great brother's 
life. 

To one who comes to the book with the right 
clue, the imagery is entirely in keeping with the 
sublimity of the conception to be imparted. The 
book takes its place again as a vision of present- 
day happenings. The vision is neither of things 
past nor of future things. It is of the eternal 
present. The Babylon of the vision, perhaps in 
the Jewish sense representing Rome, is neither 
Rome nor the city of the Euphrates. It is any 
centre of rebellion against right. It is the sin in 
London, in Paris, or in New York. The beast 
with the seven heads and the ten horns is no longer 
a line of Roman Caesars; he represents the un- 
scrupulous man of power, whether he be king or 



The Living Christ 75 

politician, millionaire or demagogue. The Christ 
is the immanent Christ and in a wonderful way- 
blends the human and the divine, now appearing 
as the sole ruler, himself the king of kings and 
lord of lords, now as the infant child of a woman. 
Through it all the figure of the Lamb retains the 
essential character of service and sacrifice. 

The inspiration of such exalted imagery is 
requisite to a just understanding of the uplifting 
work of Christianity. The four Gospels would be 
incomplete without this fifth. The portrayal of 
the Christ of the world at large is a necessary 
sequel of the pictures of him in and about Jeru- 
salem. The three years and a half in the basin of 
the Jordan is but one chapter in a much larger 
volume. This final revelation is the only fitting 
close to the Bible. It opens the Book of the 
World. It translates Christ into the vocabulary 
of the larger efforts, the race problems, the social 
developments, and the individual perplexities. 
We obtain a new idea of the impression which the 
divine man left behind him, a new idea of the full 
extent to which his disciples grasped his meaning, 
because such a background as is furnished by this 
book alone was for them sufficient to do justice to 
the work which he was still performing. 

No one has understood the Christ of Galilee 
until he has entered into the spirit of the Revela- 
tion; no one has understood human life, this 
commonplace life, this humdrum routine, no one 
has understood himself or understood society, 



76 The Unexplored Self 

until he has been able to translate it into the spirit 
of the Book of Revelation, the Fifth Gospel; and 
no one can understand the modern trend of things 
till he has seen the exaltation and victory of self- 
sacrifice. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SELF-GIVING 



THAT Paul's preaching was effective there 
can be no doubt, and he said that the 
sum and substance of his preaching was Christ 
crucified. 

For this reason alone, if for no other, it is well for 
present-day Christianity to think very carefully 
and seriously about the power that is in a cruci- 
fix, about the cross itself that is the symbol of 
Christendom. 

In this connection it may be asserted that if the 
value of the individual man is the essence of 
Christianity, the cross is its centre because the 
cross points the direction of the value in a man's 
effort. 

Different men whom the world honors are hon- 
ored for the valuable gifts which they have made. 
Some have given discoveries, others literature, 
others ideas. 

Among all such names, Christianity ascribes a 
77 



78 The Unexplored Self 

uniquely supreme place to Christ. It is but 
natural to ask whether this be due to zealotry or 
to custom, or, if to neither of these, to ask what 
gift to humanity can warrant so lofty and so 
unique a place. 

Christ is not unapproached in his teaching, nor 
in his theology, nor in his example. Other 
teachers, other theologians, other martyrs have a 
right to be put at least into the same class. 

The distinct feature of Christ's gift to the world 
was that he gave himself. This statement, how- 
ever, needs to be understood. 

Others have suffered agonies, perhaps as poig- 
nant as his, for their faith. We cannot accept 
the traditional view that his suffering was infinite, 
more than equal to all the suffering of human- 
ity. One is almost ashamed to mention such a 
view. Many names may be brought forward 
where heroism and glad self-sacrifice in behalf of 
humanity have been somewhat on a par with the 
crucifixion. 

If we make the distinction that, while these 
other men gave their lives to humanity, he gave 
himself, still the peculiar reason for singling out 
Christ as the Saviour of the world — the Saviour 
not from punishment but to a nobler plane of 
life — the peculiar reason is not yet clear. 

Therefore is suggested in answer to the question 
as to Christ's gift, the rather cumbersome phrase: 
he gave the gift of himself. 



Self-Giving 79 



That which was unique in the crucifixion was 
that Christ gave the gift of himself. 

This statement is not a quibble. Others have 
died to give life to men, to give freedom, to give 
discoveries. Socrates, so often mentioned, drank 
the poison hemlock to give men love for the truth 
and respect for the state. Stephen died and gave 
a man's completest testimony to his loyalty. In 
a certain sense these are gifts of the self. 

But when Christ gave himself he consciously 
and purposely made the gift the expression of his 
message. He was incarnating his view of life in 
the moment of his death. 

His preaching and example had been of love, of 
outpouring ; and men had not understood. They 
had been drawn to the messenger but had over- 
looked the message. 

He had said whosoever shall seek to save his 
life shall lose it and whosoever shall lose his life 
shall save it and they had been confused by the 
paradox. 

Then he deliberately, though realizing all that 
it would mean of suffering, put his message into a 
final act and men's eyes began to open to his new 
definition of success and of life. 

His whole career had been a lavish giving of self. 
That gift he had tried to explain as the highest 
achievement. He had tried to reveal that as 



80 The Unexplored Self 

God's own character. The idea was so revolu- 
tionary that men would not grasp it. The cross 
came, then, as the necessary climax and summary 
of his whole life. 



It will be remembered that at the very last, John 
and James, the farthest advanced of his disciples, 
were seeking through their mother to obtain the 
best places in the new kingdom. Even they had, 
as yet, no inkling of the Gospel. 

The course which Christ took to force an under- 
standing would be called in military tactics the 
Forlorn Hope. It was the last chance and a 
desperate one. After full debate with himself, 
he voluntarily chose death as the means of self- 
revelation. 

The issue has abundantly justified his faith in 
humanity. At first there was consternation and 
despair, but little by little light began to shine. 
The cross began to be for the world the emblem of 
self -giving, the inspiration for effort, and the reve- 
lation of the divine nature. 

We said that it gave a new definition of success 
and of life. Sociology is beginning to accept this 
new definition of success and grants that suc- 
cess is not in great accumulation but in great 
impart ation. 

And how about the Christian definition of life? 



Self-Giving 81 

Is this in line with science? The older conclusion 
of science that life is where the building-up process 
surpasses the tearing-down is insufficient and mis- 
leading. A careful inquiry will show that when 
life is present the outgo exceeds the income. The 
worm receives earth and produces cells and organs. 
The plant receives elements and gives fragrance and 
form. The brain receives blood and excretes ideas. 

There is here no offer of theories, and explana- 
tions must, of course, be left with those who make 
the study of biology a profession. To say, how- 
ever, that living things are alive because in them, 
from the protozoan increasingly to history's giants, 
more is given than is received is a mere recital of 
fact. It opposes no principle of science though 
it may call for a' new one. 

Facts show that as soon as life is present reaction 
no longer equals physical action but overbalances 
it ; and that the more the gift surpasses the receipt 
the more life is there. It is humbly suggested to 
science that the nature of life be studied in its 
completest form rather than in its obscurest 
appearances. 

This brings us back to what may be taken as the 
slogan of the good tidings: whoever will lose his 
life for the sake of Christ's spirit shall save his life. 



In Genesis it is narrated that when Adam and 
Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, an 



82 The Unexplored Self 

angel with flaming sword, that is, the angel of 
death, kept the way to the tree of life. Through 
death was the way to the Paradise of God. 

From the Christian standpoint the narrative 
becomes a parable of the Atonement. An artist 
might properly paint the cherubim at the gateway 
of Heaven in the form of a great flaming crucifix, 
life sacrificed for the sake of life gained. 

Such a painting would be in line with the 
apostles' idea that Christ was the spiritual Adam, 
differing in this from the first Adam, that 
while the latter led humanity out from the 
presence of God, he brought humanity back 
to God. 

Perhaps it was something like this that Paul 
had in mind when he contrasted Adam's attempt 
to grasp equality with God with Christ's humbling 
himself to the death of the cross. By this means 
Christ reached exaltation to the right hand of 
God. Man is made in the image of God; the 
way, however, to become truly divine is not 
through grasping knowledge and life but through 
the gift of the self. This arrives at the power of 
God and at the wisdom of God. 

Moreover, it was something like this that Paul 
had in mind when he said, I die daily. Daily 
came the chances to serve ; daily was self-sacrifice 
called for ; and daily did his life become richer and 
fuller. 

It is this last thought which is, perhaps, near- 



Self-Giving 83 

est to men's every-day walk. They may not be 
called upon to ascend the scaffold, but day by day 
come life's difficulties and day by day is to come 
the surrender to God's purpose. 



When the words were spoken, Whosoever would 
become great among you shall be your servant, 
and whosoever would be first among you shall be 
your bond-servant, the thing was considered 
impossible and some to-day think the words can be 
true only of a far-off millennium; but they are in 
direct line with our thought and are already being 
demonstrated true. Public opinion is learning that 
a man's powers of gathering and accumulating do 
not determine his greatness. A merely wealthy 
man is no longer a great man. It is genius in giv- 
ing that wins approval. This is the real test. 
Giving must be the sole purpose of wealth. Public 
favor is beginning to elect to places of honor and 
authority those who are the best public servants. 

The advance which has been made in the 
direction of the Christian ideal. is not generally 
realized. More and more, however, society is 
acclaiming as the great in the land those who 
serve the best. Those are accounted worthy who 
are letting the outline of the cross show them 
their path. It is looking at the cross which gives 
a man the courage to master the self and to devote 
it to humanity. 



84 The Unexplored Self 

This is all encouraging, but one must not sup- 
pose that it has now become easy to be a Christian. 

In certain directions it is easier. It used to be 
hard to reconcile science and religion. It used to 
be hard to accept the creeds and also follow 
reason. We may turn aside to say that some at 
least in the past century deserve honor for their 
very courage in holding to the value of Christianity 
even though they were ridiculed by the learned and 
shaken by their own reasoning. 

Such difficulties are largely lifted. Science is 
no longer arrogant ; the demand of life for justifi- 
cation is regarded with respect; and ministration 
that can be conspicuous is not unpopular. 



With a clearer understanding of the heart of 
Christianity, however, it is harder to be a Christian 
than ever. Now the hardness comes where it 
ought to come. With a misconception of Chris- 
tianity, it has been possible for some of its most 
zealous advocates to be thoroughly selfish. When 
the cross is made actually the centre, this is 
impossible. 

Men are now asked not to subscribe to a creed, 
or to a course of reasoning. Such subscription is 
comparatively easy. They are not asked to give 
so much their money, nor their services, nor their 
enthusiasm. They are asked to give themselves, 
and this sacrifice is hard. 



Self-Giving 85 

It is not hard to give one's talents, to give one's 
voice, to give evidence of " spirituality,' ' but it is 
hard to give the self. This is spiritual. This is 
the only thing that is redemptive. A minister 
who sinks himself in his work may be deceived 
into thinking it is self-denial; he may stir men by 
his grasp of things eternal; but if he is, all the 
while, self-centred, his influence is bad. 

As little as it has yet been grasped, this heart of 
Christianity, this crucifixion, has been nevertheless 
the only salvation that the world has known. 
With it science, discovery, teaching, theology are 
uplifting. Without it they are degrading. 

The message of Christianity as thus read is 
not at all to be compressed into the words 
charity, or altruism, or martyrdom, or even love. 
There must be self-surrender. With self-sur- 
render, however, Christianity goes to the very 
roots of life and relates its sources to the 
divine. Moreover, it takes suffering and death, 
the most discouraging facts of experience, and 
translates them into instruments for achievement. 

It is at this point that the tug of Christianity 
comes; but here is also where its supremacy and 
hope come. This is a new conservation of energy 
which makes the world of self as indestructible as 
the world of matter. It says that in life reaction 
is greater than action, so that the individual life is 
lifted above the routine and a door is opened to 
indefinite growth and advance. 



CHAPTER IX 

KINSHIP AND THE CROSS 



THE inability to express vital experience in words 
is a part of the disparity between man's 
reach and his grasp. It is one of the evidences of 
his unfathomed greatness. Into every life there 
come currents whose power is recognized, without, 
however, the ability to define and explain the source. 
There has come into the world from the cruci- 
fixion of Christ, an influence, the most potent the 
world has ever known, one more cosmic than the 
primeval floods and fires; an influence so extra- 
ordinary that many have refused to think the 
single source adequate and have adduced expla- 
nations from a thousand and one different other 
directions. They have said: It should not be so, 
and have called attention to other heroic mar- 
tyrs; yet after all their additions have been mar- 
shalled into place, the cross as a symbol has stood 
high above, a millennial force, transforming lives 
and life and so transforming the very topography 
of the earth. 

86 



Kinship and the Cross 87 

Men have said that there can be no such magic 
in an event; that it must be the teachings of 
Christ, his theology, his resurrection; it must be 
the ideas developed by his disciples. Modifica- 
tions and betterments of Christianity are under- 
taken in every generation, yet those who most feel 
the intensity of the Christian faith refer it directly 
to the " cross,' ' and when we look at the course of 
Christianity we can trace the path of the empha- 
sis upon the crucifixion by the resulting greater 
transformation of life somewhat as the track of 
a stream can be traced by the vegetation and 
productivity. 

Men have found themselves face to face, not 
with what they would expect, perhaps, but with 
a fact. 

Every age has endeavored to interpret the 
11 power of the cross" and every succeeding age 
has found the interpretation insufficient. 

In days of hostage and captivity, the death of 
Christ was regarded as a ransom. When the 
commercial spirit was growing, there was the 
commercial theory of the Atonement. It has 
been regarded as vicarious suffering. There has 
been the substitution theory of the Atonement. 
Men have said, it meant the passing of the old 
Adam, that it meant the passing of the law of 
sacrifice. 

We are still familiar in these days with the 
antique and extravagant imagery retained in our 



88 The Unexplored Self 

hymns, where the sinner is said to be washed in 
the blood of the Lamb, where he is said to have 
plunged into the fountain of blood. 

The cross saves men from sin where there is 
faith in the crucified; for since suffering arouses 
men to the fact of sin, they may accept Calvary 
and be saved from suffering. In this way Christ 
suffered vicariously for the world. 

The crucifixion stands for the disastrous results 
of ignorance and selfishness. It is the assurance of 
unflinching love. 



The great wealth of interpretations shows the 
reality and the manif oldness of the influence of the 
crucifixion which to the Greeks was foolishness and 
to the Jews a stumbling-block. It is strange and 
humbling, the difference that the point of view 
makes. 

The disciples at first thought that they had the 
task of proving Christ to be the Messiah in spite 
of the cross, and, lo, they learned that he was the 
Messiah because of the cross. The discouraged 
words spoken by the two disciples on the way to 
Emmaus probably represented the prevailing 
sentiment: But we hoped that it was he who 
should redeem Israel. 

The apostle to the Gentiles perhaps most 
clearly perceived that what had been a cause of 
offence must be made the basis for faith. The 



Kinship and the Cross 89 

cross, which at first made them all forsake him and 
flee, thus became the rallying point. Christ, when 
he was lifted up as Moses lifted up the brazen 
serpent in the wilderness, drew all men to him. 

Among the manifold meanings of the redemp- 
tion, a subject which has already been discussed 
in the preceding chapter, there is one that has 
been increasingly recognized recently. This is 
the power of suffering to arouse a sense of kinship 
and thus to develop kinship. It is the sympathy 
that is irresistibly quickened by suffering which 
establishes kinship as nothing else does. Con- 
sanguinity, co-operation, social and national ties 
are feeble forces compared with the tide of emotion, 
the catching at the throat, the outreaching of the 
heart that sympathy with sorrow and grief brings. 
The actual unity, the proto-psychic identity, the 
spirit oneness, the immanent divinity is revealed 
and recognized as in no other way. 

It is in this connection that one of Christ's 
seven words from the cross obtains special sig- 
nificance. 



We are told that there stood by the cross of 
Jesus, his mother and his mother's sister, Mary 
the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene. When 
Jesus, therefore, saw his mother and the disciple 
standing by whom he loved he said unto his 



90 The Unexplored Self 

mother, Woman, behold thy son. Then said he 
to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from 
that hour John took her unto his own. That 
common ordeal of grief so knit together John and 
Mary that ever after the life of the one was blended 
into the life of the other. 

History is replete with illustrations of this effect 
of suffering. It has become classic in the words 
of Ruth to Naomi after they two, aliens in race, 
had thrice supported one another through the val- 
ley of the shadow of death: Whither thou goest 
I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge ; thy 
people shall be my people and thy God my God; 
where thou diest will I die and there will I be 
buried. 

It is not geographical propinquity that welds 
people together into a single nation, nor even com- 
mon interests, so much as sympathy under real or 
imagined persecution. Oppressive measures bring 
out the adhesive fluids in human society. Tyran- 
nical legislation acts as a fire to melt less notable 
metals into irresistible steel. 

There is an actual spirit of fraternity among 
veteran soldiers, hailing from different parts of 
the country. It is a bond that, invisible, was 
woven in the long marches, the dreary days, the 
terrors of battle — all the privation which the war 
meant to them. 

Not infrequently it happens that a person whom 
one has little known or from whom, perhaps, one 



Kinship and the Cross 91 

has been repelled, shows the eyes glistening with 
tears and at once the heart brims over with sym- 
pathy and the hands are extended in assistance. 
A man, whom, perhaps, one would have liked to 
help before, save that he seemed so distant, in an 
unguarded moment reveals his pain, and the way 
is laid to friendship. 

A man may easily be heedless of the cripples, 
the maimed, the halt, and the blind around him 
until the ill has come into his own life. Many a 
free bed in hospitals, many of the hospitals them- 
selves are the direct result of some such new dis- 
covery of human kinship. 

To a great extent the adoration that encircles 
the holy word maternity, motherhood, is the 
result of the suffering and travail which the 
word postulates. The word mother is a scar 
like the blessed wound-prints which the lips touch 
reverently. 

It is almost a paradox that in the hours of men- 
tal gloom, when a man treads the wine-press alone, 
when he feels the most aloof, in these very hours 
the soul is reaching out and his inner self is being 
most closely meshed into humanity. It is the 
need of love that makes the love leap forth as buds 
reach out toward the sun. 



With this meaning alone, however, we have 
gone a comparatively short way into our subject. 



92 The Unexplored Self 

A far greater influence in the crucifixion lies in its 
having knit men and God together. 

Men have thought it presumptuous to claim that 
God could love human beings. I do not know 
fully why he does but one reason is that men suffer. 
There may be other reasons but this one seems 
almost enough by itself, that men need his love. 

Even were the creator an indifferent being, 
human woe would arouse his interest. It is pos- 
sible to speak carelessly here, but if there be a God, 
the cry of the sheep gone astray would take the 
shepherd away into the mountains, and if so be 
that he found it, he would rejoice over it more than 
over the ninety and nine which had not gone 
astray. 

In its attention to the outcast, Christianity is 
more true to psychology than the religion of the 
survival of the fittest. Those to whom most is 
forgiven may possibly love the most. Humanity 
is to be raised from its lowest levels and develop- 
ment is not for a few favored specimens. 

And how have men come to love God — not to 
fear him nor to obej^ him, but to love him? There 
may be other causes, his goodness, his mercy, but 
this one seems almost enough by itself, that he 
needs their help and suffers without it. More 
potent than any other motive in calling out the 
love of humanity toward God is the revelation of 
him as suffering. Such a vision is able to recon- 
cile the most rebellious child to his parent. 



Kinship and the Cross 93 

Men who thought of God as in eternal bliss 
have been able to speak angrily of him, but as 
soon as the crucifixion becomes to one an actual 
revelation of the character of God, namely that he 
is grieved and frustrated because men will not 
enter into his purpose for the world, nay more, 
that he actually suffers when men crucify his son — 
as soon as this aspect of the crucifixion is actual to 
one, the effect is spontaneous. 

If this interpretation of the Atonement as recon- 
ciling men to God seem too modern to be ortho- 
dox, there are plenty of proof texts, as, for in- 
stance, in Corinthians: All things are of God, 
who reconciled us to himself through Christ 
and gave unto us the ministry of the reconcilia- 
tion, to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling 
the world unto himself ; and again in Ephesians : 
And might reconcile both Jews and Greeks in 
one body unto God through the cross ; and else- 
where. 

Few are called upon to-day to go into the older 
theological discussions of the Atonement and the 
Redemption, but one can so understand the cru- 
cifixion that not only will he be aroused to a new 
sympathy with his fellows, but there may come 
to him a new sense of divine kinship; and as he 
thinks of God eternally suffering through and in 
behalf of humanity, there may come a realization 
of the reconciliation, not of God to him, but of 
himself to God. He may learn not merely to 
praise God and worship him but he may love 



94 The Unexplored Self 

him. The Christian Prometheus stands for God 
as well as for humanity. 

Love to God comes to us enjoined as the first 
and great commandment, and it is the suffering 
God revealed in suffering humanity that compels 
love. 



CHAPTER X 

THE FIRST AND GREAT COMMANDMENT 



THE subject directs attention to the great 
Shema, the Pater Noster of the Hebrews, 
worn in their frontlets, placed upon their door- 
posts: Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is one 
Jehovah and thou shalt love Jehovah with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. 

The founder of Christianity summed up the 
whole duty of a disciple in two laws, this one and 
one taken from the book of Leviticus: Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The priority 
he gave to the former. 

Of the failures of the Christian Church and of 
Christian individuals, the more conspicuous have 
been in the keeping of the latter. 

The fault of the Church in this regard has 
frequently been notorious. To bear the name of 
Christ has not guaranteed love of the neighbor. 
The milk of human kindness has often flowed 
more freely even under pagan surroundings than 
among church members. 

95 



96 The Unexplored Self 

He who looks back at the humanitarian move- 
ments of the past century, may readily be led to 
believe that those who were indifferent to the 
claims of deity led in teaching brotherly love. 

It is in part because of the significance of the 
second commandment that we urge the first, and 
the matter is stated thus in a paradox to make the 
issue clear. 

The objection comes at once: "We need more 
emphasis on the second; why then call for emphasis 
on the first ? The Church stands aloof because 
the godward side in religion has already been 
pushed forward at the expense of the manward 
side. There has been too much talk about divinity 
and too little about humanity ; the emphasis should 
be inverted. The need is for more sociology and 
less theology, more about the present world and 
less about heaven, more about love to the actual 
and less about love to the unseen. After all, 
religion is trying to make men honest and 
helpful ; therefore if the second is the important 
thing, why not say so and drive directly at the 
goal?" 

Against this very prevalent plea, however, is the 
position taken by one who understood and lived 
the second commandment as no one else has ever 
done. 

These two opposite points of view furnish quite 
a little to think about, since the number and 
influence of those who would make primary the 



The First and Great Commandment 97 

commandment to love the neighbor, puts their 
position where it deserves serious consideration. 



We may pick out several lines of thinking which 
lead to disagreement with Christ's emphasis — 
several classes of thinkers who put love to neighbor 
first and foremost. 

One important class is made up of every-day 
workers, practical men, newspaper editors, men of 
sound common-sense, men who are accustomed to 
rub up against men. 

They say: "Yes, the Church is a good thing; I 
want my family to attend; the Church keeps up 
public opinion ; it is bad for a community to have 
no Church and it is probably necessary to add 
ritual and singing so that the services may be 
made attractive and the people may be drawn in; 
but the real purpose is to keep crime down and 
to teach morality; the ceremonies are a frame, a 
setting for the ethical lessons, for the human side." 

Perhaps into this group would be put also 
those who are interested in the Ethical Culture 
movement. They have their meetings and their 
sermons but the second of Christ's two com- 
mandments is for them admittedly the first and 
great. 

Into another group we may put those whose 
creed is similar but who are more aggressive with it. 



98 The Unexplored Self 

The religion of the Socialists, for instance, 
centres in the second commandment. The seen 
world with its demands and difficulties is sufficient 
for them. The happiness of men and women 
to-day is their aim and they will not distract the 
vision by an appeal for belief in anything larger 
than our seen life. 

They will go straight at the mark without 
beating around the bush. To all intents and 
purposes death is the end of life. If there is 
anything more it is useless to speculate about it. 
Legislation is their method. 

Their case as they state it makes a strong appeal 
and draws an increasing following. 

In another group we may put the humani- 
tarians, largely made up of the school-bred, to 
whom the cry of the human appeals, and who find 
their creed summed up in love for man. 

Hunt's poem of Abou Ben Adhem is a type of 
this point of view. It will be remembered that 
in this poem the name of the man who loved his 
fellow-men led all the rest in the list of those who 
loved the Lord. 

The responsive thrill that comes at the thought 
in the poem is evidence that to some extent, at 
least, we agree with the sentiment. Human love 
is felt to be the portal to divine love. 

If they love not men whom they have seen, 
how shall they love God whom they have not 
seen? The argument for the primacy of the 



The First and Great Commandment 99 

second commandment rests, therefore, on script- 
ural authority. 

In another group may be placed the members and 
supporters of fraternal orders which are so numer- 
ous all the world over. There are many who find 
in Grange or Lodge their church and their religion. 

They contrast the fraternity within their circles 
with the absence of benefits and of systematized 
visitation in the churches. They accept a belief 
in God and have a right to be called religious 
bodies, but with them all the love of the brother 
or the sister is frankly first. 

Into another group may be gathered those who, 
nominally enrolled within the Church, have been 
perplexed by confusing argumentation about the 
existence of God. They see a need for workers, 
and they believe that the Church furnishes an 
opportunity for helpfulness, but they have never 
thought through to a faith in the first com- 
mandment. 

They think that they can work without it. 
There are many such who rather despair of 
obtaining anything from the Godward side of 
religious life, and who thus miss the gladness and 
brightness of service although they are con- 
scientious and faithful in the manward side. 

A final group we may mention of ministers and 
religious leaders who, because they see in the 



ioo The Unexplored Self 

institutional work and in the social activity a 
renewed influence of the Church, are inclined to 
subordinate the spiritual part of the church life. 

Christ fully understood and sympathized with 
the longing to help man. He would call for love 
of neighbor more yearningly than any one in the 
groups which we have enumerated. 

His plea was not for less thoughtfulness toward 
our fellows but more — nevertheless: Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul and with all thy mind; this is the 
first and great commandment. 



It is the first and great commandment, to begin 
with, because there is much more to life — life is 
much broader and deeper than merely loving 
one's neighbor. The larger dependence is the 
thing that imparts a meaning to the neighbor 
relation. Without it the neighbor relation would 
be a superficial and unimportant thing. 

There is more to life than eating and drinking 
and vegetation and kindliness. There is more 
than the feeling well disposed toward mankind. 
— more than with Omar Khayyam, poesy, food, 
and friendship. There is more than keeping in 
harmony with circumstances, more than poise and 
serenity, more than frictionless motion, more than 
the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 



The First and Great Commandment 101 

With increased enlightenment happiness itself 
becomes irritating unless it is related to a greater 
purpose. Self-sacrifice, expenditure for others, 
struggle, work — all become mockeries without a 
deeper meaning. Without a reference beyond, 
love itself becomes a disappointment, a delirium. 

So play, sympathy, self-control, morality, are 
valid only in their higher bearing and only because 
experience has its elevation as well as its con- 
tinuance. There is advance and uplift for us as 
well as freedom from rancor and from malice. 

The Church is more than a place where children 
may be taught manners and morals, kindliness 
and contentment. The Church is more than a 
centre for charity and philanthropy. These 
would be emptiness and vanity without a further 
issue. Sermons and ethics amount to little un- 
less we learn to appreciate some larger good in 
conduct. 

Jesus had indeed his teachings and his activities, 
but he had also his times of solitude and his times 
of communion with that, or with him whom he 
called his heavenly father. He healed bodies 
and minds, but he was chiefly interested in stimu- 
lating faith in life. 

Life and neighbor-love obtain a meaning be- 
cause of a loving and lovable God from whom 
we come and to whom we return. 

This emphasis appeals to the practical man, to 



102 The Unexplored Self 

the ethicist, to the humanitarian, to the fraternal 
orders, to the religious doubters, not to be satisfied 
with vegetation, with digestion and affable socia- 
bility, but to press through to the greater purpose 
which gives an adequate value to these things. 

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind ; 
this is the first and great commandment. 



A second reason why it is the first and great 
commandment is because without it permanent, 
organized humanitarianism, work for neighbor, is 
impossible. This may be said not as a theory but 
as a universal experience. 

It is easy to obtain recruits for a new work or for 
a new organization, but to hold those who are to 
remain in the work month in and month out, year 
in and year out, there must be more than the 
attractiveness of novelty. 

Especially is a deeper interest necessary when 
criticisms and disagreements arise as they always 
do where men are trying to co-operate. 

Many a religious worker, because the real touch 
with God was lost, has withdrawn when dis- 
couragements arose, washing his hands of the 
whole affair. It is natural to say: I have done 
my best; if people do not like my efforts I will 
give up trying. 



The First and Great Commandment 103 

Many who have been very zealous, thinking 
they were jealous for the Lord, see promises unkept 
and covenants broken and they retire far from the 
field of labor, ready to give up. It requires a 
voice from above to put new energy into such 
workers and to send them back to the post of 
duty. 

As long as things go well and there is evidence 
of growth there is no dearth of helpers. 

Any scheme, provided it offers increase, can 
find supporters; but when the test comes, the 
touch of elbow with elbow, the actual self-denial, 
the difficulties, the tugs, the friction, the blocks in 
the way, the mistakes and the failures — then 
interest in the organization and interest in the 
work need to be supplemented by a realization of 
the further reach of the activity. 

Then is seen the force of the words, Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul and with all thy mind ; this is the first 
and great commandment. 



It is the first and great commandment in the 
third place because love for man as man, for 
neighbor as neighbor, is impossible without it. 

The test is the proof. Any one who has tried 
other means will confess that there must be a 
higher relation which makes man an actual 



104 The Unexplored Self 

brother, which brings love for and sympathy with 
man as man. 

It is easy enough to care for certain men, for 
certain neighbors. It is easy enough to care for 
man in the abstract, but when it comes to the 
particular man, to the mean man, to the small 
man, to the noisy man, to the conceited man, to 
the empty man, to the uncleanly man, there must 
be something else to call out the love. Close con- 
tact, rubbing up against him, often increases the 
repugnance. 

Even years of intimate association and friend- 
ship are no guarantee that the bitterest hatred 
may not break out. 

Frequently it is said, I simply cannot like him. 
In such cases what methods may be suggested to 
bring out a liking, the interest opposite, the 
character opposite, the temperament opposite? 
Is there anything more than a mutual forbearance 
in behalf of peace? Unless one can press through 
to a love of God who is a common father, love for 
the unlovely man fails. Only such a considera- 
tion can make reasonable the subordination of 
self. Only such a bridge way is able to overcome 
personal and racial antipathies, social jealousies 
and temperamental dislikes. 

A good illustration is found in the numbers 
three and four, which are as different as numbers 
can well be. The one is odd and the other even, 
the one triangular and the other rectangular. 



The First and Great Commandment 105 

They seem to be mutually exclusive until is 
taken into consideration the number twelve, 
and behold the two nestle together quite lov- 
ingly. 

It is something like such different tools as 
a hammer and a saw, as dissimilar as imagin- 
able, the one used for joining and the other 
for separating. There is no way to make them 
brothers till we come to building a house and 
then we find them co-operant and mutually 
helpful. 

Two men who have been life-long enemies, on 
opposite sides of every question, mutually dis- 
trustful and suspicious, may nevertheless in the 
hour of the country's need find themselves march- 
ing side by side, .following the same flag and keep- 
ing step to the same music. 

Actual love, real love for man as man, requires 
the support of a higher relation. It may be pos- 
sible to forgive wrongs, but when we are called 
upon not only to forgive but to love those who 
are now doing us w r rong, we need the first and 
great commandment. 

Of course, the love of one or more human be- 
ings, temporally precedes our knowledge of God. 
The particular must always precede the universal. 
But when we wish to come back to experience 
with a universal law we shall find: Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul and with all thy mind, is truly the 
first and great commandment. 



106 The Unexplored Self 

6 

The present is a period when the relative 
emphasis put by the founder of Christianity- 
needs especially to be recognized. 

Unless God is kept in mind there is a great 
danger that with our practical natures, with the 
abundant opportunities for amusements, literary, 
spectacular, or athletic, and with the increasing 
society life which seems to entail luxury and 
social ambition — with all these there is the 
danger that our spiritual natures will become 
dwarfed and stunted. 

There is, furthermore, the danger that such 
developments as the institutional Church, with 
its varied and beneficial activities, may direct the 
attention away from the Godward relation. In 
the success of the institutional Church may be 
forgotten that the first and primary function of 
the Church is to bring men to God and to bring 
God to men. Upon its ability to do this depends 
its life and its power. 

There is in the third place, in regard to the 
love of neighbor, a special danger in a democracy, 
when men shall cease to look upon their fellows 
as brothers in any real way. The disruptions 
through social caste and economic distinctions 
appear to be gaining ground. 

Perhaps more immediately upon us is the dan- 



The First and Great Commandment 107 

ger from race prejudice where it seems increasingly 
difficult to arouse love for those of a different skin. 
And, of course, the ill-feeling and unhappiness 
from individual dislikes and from selfishness is 
always upon us. It is only the first command- 
ment thoroughly understood and obeyed that 
can bring either the nation or the individual to an 
actual sense of brotherhood and of neighbor love. 

It was therefore no paradox when Christ, because 
he recognized the importance and the need of the 
second commandment, proclaimed what we have 
taken as a sort of refrain: Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy 
soul and with all thy mind; this is the first and 
great commandment. 

Christianity speaks of God as a personality 
outside of and apart from the human individual. 
Its teaching about God, however, it completes 
with a teaching about the Holy Spirit, God's 
power working through the individual. 



CHAPTER XI 

UNDER AUTHORITY 



WERE a man standing on a village street and 
a stranger should step up to him, put his 
hand on his shoulder, and say, You come along 
with me, what would he answer? 

Had he his wits about him, he would answer, 
Who are you? 

It is, of course, likely that he would be too 
startled to say anything as sensible as that. But 
if he did keep his wits about him he would answer, 
Who are you? 

If the reply should be, It 's none of your busi- 
ness ; you just come along, there is little likelihood 
that he would go. 

If, however, when asked, Who are you? the 
stranger should reply, I 'm an officer, and should 
show his badge, at least there would not be any 
physical resistance. His ultimate right to enforce 
obedience would be recognized. 

There is a wide difference in the two cases, 
although the same sort of a man gives the com- 

108 



Under Authority 109 

mand and the command is the same. The dif- 
ference is that in the second case the words are 
spoken under authority from the whole com- 
munity. 

It is not a single individual giving an order. 
Behind him is the compelling machinery of the 
county government and that is recognized as 
mandatory. 



This is rather a simple instance of the power 
that comes from being under authority. Often 
such power if from the right authority can perform 
wonders. 

A little water can derive its authority from the 
winter's cold and, in freezing, split a granite 
boulder, or it can obtain its authority from the 
furnace heat and burst an iron cylinder. A bar 
of iron can derive its authority from the dynamo 
and become a huge magnet. A carbon filament 
may be empowered by an electric battery and so 
become a glowing coil. The mineral earths may 
draw their authority from the distant sun and 
paint the flowers with inimitable colors. The 
fountain may find its authority in the mountain 
reservoirs and so pour out an unfailing supply of 
refreshment. 

In such obvious cases it seems hardly neces- 
sary to call attention to the authorization, yet 
there are forces in life so hidden that their immer- 



no The Unexplored Self 

gence appears as a mystery, something secret, and 
it means everything to one when he learns the 
secret. 

It was this secret which a Roman Centurion, 
told about in Luke's Gospel, had penetrated and 
formulated. 

The crowds might think that Christ's power 
resided in himself. This Centurion saw whence 
the power was derived and therefore had a differ- 
ent kind of confidence in him. That was why his 
belief differed from other evidences of faith which 
Christ had met. 

Christ's estimate of this Centurion's insight as 
peerless was for a long time difficult for me to 
understand. Why was his faith the maximum? 
I was tempted to ask. 

Its pre-eminence was due to the fact that he had 
looked through the Christ and seen him in whom 
the Christ moved. 

His penetration had discovered the secret of 
Christ's personality and message, the secret of his 
unique love and of his sympathy; Christ was 
under authority. And Christ exclaimed, I have 
not seen so great faith, no, not in Israel. 



There is something uplifting about the mere 
recognition of great potentialities. The mountain 
summit made golden by the morning sun, or 



Under Authority in 

abyss answering unto abyss, is less grand than 
when one human soul appreciates the majesty of 
another soul. 

A corresponding thrill of satisfaction must have 
come over Christ at the insight which could result 
only from a deeply fathomed knowledge. Roman 
born, the man was, it is true, not Jewish, but he 
had seen the ranges of personality ; he had learned 
of the backgrounds of existence. 

I also, he said, am a man set under authority, 
having under myself soldiers, and I say to this 
one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and 
he cometh, and to my servant, Do this, and he 
doeth it. 

The Centurion's commands were obeyed, but 
he was not deceived as to the reason. He knew 
why they were obeyed — not because it was he, 
Marcellus, or Quirinus that gave them but because 
the entire Roman system of government gave them. 

It is a notable thing to look beneath the surface 
of occurrences and events and to find the principle 
that underlies them. The world, as a whole, has 
been slow in understanding the direct relation be- 
tween Christ and the force that is raising humanity. 

In the direction of this relation is the reason for 
the hold that the thought of Christ's pre -existence 
has kept upon the Church — a pre-existence that 
has been accepted and maintained in spite of its 
logical difficulties. Perhaps a majority interpret 
it to be an ideal pre-existence. 



ii2 The Unexplored Self 

In any case the thought has been that he had a 
commissioner ship. He did not arise accidentally. 
He was not aloof in his origination. He was not 
isolated in his work. He came from the father. 
He was the instrument of a great design. 

He was a son carrying on his father's business. 
He was the divine idea or the divine Word or the 
divine Logos, made flesh. 

These phrases, however much they may have 
been abused, are attempts to express realities. 
Men come into the world with a destiny to achieve 
if they will keep in touch with the great worker 
who works through them. This authority which 
Christ had they can have. Greater works than 
his they shall do, is his own promise. The Creator, 
the Purposer, will pour out through them as much 
of his spirit as they can utilize. 



There is on exhibition in a western museum, a 
portion of a tree trunk through which a plank has 
been driven and now remains imbedded, extending 
out on both sides of the trunk. It is the record of 
a cyclone. The inert wooden plank, with no 
initiative of its own, performed a superhuman 
feat — superhuman because no strength of man 
can drive a plank through a green tree trunk. 

The secret of this superhuman power was that 
the plank was seized in the grip of the resistless 
hurricane. It received its authority from one of 



Under Authority 113 

the mightiest of nature's forces. Caught up and 
thus swept along there was nothing that could 
withstand its impact. 

Another illustration would be a motorman at 
the head of a train who is able to propel hundreds 
of people at tremendous speed. He is under 
authority from the power house, and therefore 
when he says to the long line of cars, Go, they go, 
and when he says, Stop, they stop. 

The chemist who puts himself and his activities 
under the authority of the great chemical laws is 
the one who advances the science. 

The successful inventor is the one who learns 
the great authoritative energies. He puts his 
feeble energies in line with them and ob- 
tains astounding results. He appears to the lay 
view a wizard. To himself he seems almost a 
hum-bug. 

And so there are in experience great principles 
of right. There are in effort great values stored 
up. There are great aims in the structure of 
nature and in history. If only men can put them- 
selves into relation with these trends, they shall 
be able to move the world toward the Utopia 
and toward the Kingdom of God. 



It is not a mere analogy which enables us to 
transport the principle from the physical to the 



1 14 The Unexplored Self 

mental and spiritual world. All activity is under 
the impulse of energy whether the energy be that 
of material motion or mental motivation or 
spiritual inspiration. 

Many a man no abler than his fellows has 
become an efficient leader because he was vitalized 
by a great ideal. 

Many a man who was at first a poor speaker 
has been transformed into an orator because of 
some great thought which sought its expression 
through him. 

Even in the animal world the timidest of 
creatures becomes fiercely savage under the 
authority of centuries of mother instinct. 

Double-minded men, unstable in all their ways, 
become veritable rocks for firmness and stability 
under the grasp of some high cause. And waver- 
ing boys and girls become unflinching martyrs 
when held as in a vice by some great movement. 

In the opera of Faust it is represented that 
Valentine, the brother of Margaret, in his fury, 
attacks Mephistopheles, who parries all the lunges 
and thrusts of his assailant. 

At length when Valentine, finding his fencing 
frustrated, presses into close quarters, his blade 
snaps in his hand and breaks off. This opens his 
eyes to the real power of the enemy he is attack- 
ing, and no longer trusting to the strength of his 
own arm or to the keenness of his blade, he reverses 
his broken sword and holding it on high, thus with 



Under Authority 1 1 5 

the hilt making a cross, he advances once more 
to the attack. 

This time, however, he is under authority. 
It is the cross which comes to his rescue. Under 
this aegis Valentine is able to turn the tables. 
Mephisto halts, is driven back and back, and 
finally turns and flees. 

Such an event is not a fiction of a poet's mind — 
nor a pretty tale. It is a fact of mental science. 
It is one of the big facts of history. 

For believers in Christianity or for unbelievers, 
the most significant of realities has been the power 
of the cross, or some would say, the power of the 
same spirit which wrought through Christ. 



With the forces of evil, humanity is engaged in 
mortal combat. The thrusts will be parried and 
the blades will be broken unless men learn to give 
up confidence in the merely human motive of 
happiness and learn the motive of a divine 
purpose. 

This is worth insisting upon because so many 
are fighting valiantly against wrong and selfish- 
ness and greed but are holding out the lesser 
motives — appealing to the desires for pleasure — 
abandoning the word duty — resigning the thought 
of a great goal in this wonderful existence of ours — 
foregoing the inspiration of the relation to the 
original and end, the Alpha and Omega. 



n6 The Unexplored Self 

Absurd it would have been for Quirinus or Mar- 
cellus, the Centurion, to divest himself of his 
authority, to resign his office, to say, Not I the 
Roman Centurion command obedience, but I 
Quirinus or Marcellus command obedience. 
Would not the reply be, Who are you — who are 
you to command me? 

It is position which gives power. It is the 
background which interprets the foreground. It 
is the setting which makes an event. It is per- 
sonality which converts a play of shadow about 
the mouth into a gracious smile. It is his country, 
its history and its needs, which makes a patriot. 
There are no self-made men. 

He who understands the secret of power is not 
swollen with pride at the activities which his word 
creates. He is, rather, self-deprecatory, knowing 
how petty his actual power is in comparison to the 
huge reservoirs which he is in a position to tap. 

This was the basis of Christ's humility. It was 
likewise the basis of the Centurion's humility, 
who said, For I am not worthy that thou shouldest 
come under my roof. 



The word humility leads to the thought of sub- 
mission which is entailed by our subject. Humil- 
ity is not a popular virtue. Submission is hard. 
Authority is irksome. 



Under Authority 117 

A little consideration will show, however, that 
men are by nature or by necessity under authority. 
They are to start with under the bondage of the 
senses. They are creatures of circumstances, of 
particular moods, of temporary passions. They 
are swayed by transient motives. 

Always energy, but to begin with the lower 
types of energy, find expression in their conduct. 
They are under the authority of the earth. They 
are therefore, when revolting against divine author- 
ity, in danger of going into an actual slavery. 

Only as they come under the control of the 
higher, the spiritual energies, are they able to 
resist the earthly and so do what they really wish 
to do — what they most wish to do. 

The case is something like that of a boat which 
has been drifting about at the mercy of the tides 
and the currents ; if it finally succeeds in hoisting 
sail, by acting under the authority of the winds, 
it will be able to make the desired haven. In 
submitting to a higher force it will gain its will. 

This submission to authority is not a giving up 
of individuality. It is not a confession of weak- 
ness. It is to use the instruments and instru- 
mentalities that turn driftwood into a ship — that 
augment personality — that make the man more 
free than the brute and a civilized man more at 
liberty than the savage. 

To sum up what this chapter has tried to say, 
then — 



n8 The Unexplored Self 

In physical accomplishment the secret is to let 
one's little means be supplemented by the great 
influences, to let his strength be augmented by the 
great energies. The removal of mountains is 
feasible to those who can place themselves under 
the authority of gravitation, expansion, and 
electricity. 

In mental growth and activity the secret is to 
let one's mind receive the currents of the world's 
laws and the world's intellection, to be impelled 
by the tremendous momentum of great thinkers. 

And in life, as a whole, the secret is to let one's 
finite spirit be supported and stimulated by the 
imperfectly understood divine spirit. 

Men are not to stand alone. They are not to 
fight in isolation. They are not to remain under 
the authority of the senses. They may link their 
efforts to the cosmic, to the divine effort. 

Evolution shows in part the immense plan that 
is working out. History shows in part the trend 
of human advance. The individual hopes and 
yearnings disclose still more clearly what the 
glory is that shall be. And men are to be more 
and more inbreathed by the divine purpose. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE COMMUNION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 



UNTIL a person has accepted the central 
message of Christianity, there is no 
need to complicate his thinking with a doc- 
trine of the Trinity, and of course he can be a 
Christian without accepting such a doctrine. 
Yet, for him who thinks a little further, it is a 
wholesome preventative of a one-sided deism, 
or of a one-sided pantheism, or of a one-sided 
humanism. 

To speak of divinity at times as separate from 
the world, at other times as within the world, and 
to speak of the son as divine, and also at times as 
distinct from God, fits experience better than an 
exclusive monism, or dualism, or pluralism. We 
know so little about existence that it is naive to 
jam it into the framework of a single principle. 
Diversity is as real as similarity and the many is 
as actual as the one. 

Men are independent from one another and 
from God. At the same time they are all united 

119 



120 The Unexplored Self 

and in a mutual relation ; and this fact is expressed 
in the third member of the triad. 

The communion of the Holy Spirit — the phrase 
is familiar from its use in the Benediction. It 
comes down with every evidence of authenticity. 

The Old Testament placed its confidence in 
inspiration and found that inspiration among the 
Gentiles also. Aside from the apostolic sanction, 
the phrase is an echo of the gift and bequest of 
the founder of Christianity. It desires a divine 
spirit in each man. The communion of the Holy 
Spirit has the authority of the Church Fathers 
from the earliest times. 

And yet to believe it in any actual way is for a 
great many of our churchmen a heresy. A minis- 
ter may, at the close of a service, say the words as 
liturgy, but apparently not trust them as true. 



Most candidates for the ministry are put 
through the following cross-examination. 

Question: Do you believe in the inspiration 
of the Bible? The not difficult answer is, 
Yes. 

Question: Do you believe that men like 
Luther and Phillips Brooks were inspired? 

Here likewise the answer may quite easily be, 
Yes. 

Question : Is the inspiration of men like Luther 



The Communion of the Holy Spirit 121 

and Phillips Brooks different from the inspiration 
of the Bible? 

And unless the answer is, Yes, the inspiration is 
essentially different, there is an immediate outcry 
of unorthodoxy. 

This is where the candidate, who does not 
realize that many of his questioners regard the 
ordeal, through which the novitiate is being put, 
as a sort of hazing, is threatened by two horns of 
a dilemma that to him is a disturbing one. On 
the one hand all his reading of the Old and New 
Testament has led him to feel that inspiration is 
not confined to the canon of the Scriptures; on 
the other hand if he says that the uncanonical 
inspiration is not different from the scriptural, he 
is said to have cast the Bible down from its throne. 
He is said to have attacked the supremacy or 
uniqueness of God's Word. 

Were the examination of a candidate for li- 
censure to preach, no more than a bit of hazing, 
the embarrassment of the victim might be a pleas- 
ant feature of the process; but when young men 
answer so as to conceal their real opinions, the 
effect is bad upon them and upon the influence of 
the Church. Some time ago I was in the Pres- 
bytery of New York when a young man accused 
us to our faces of being a trades-union to keep 
out those who desired to preach. Such a thought 
in matters of ordination ought to be so impos- 
sible as to be blasphemous. 



122 The Unexplored Self 



The dilemma in which every one who tries to 
accept both the present-day activity of the spirit 
of God and also the so-called orthodox basing of 
the authority of the Bible — this dilemma should 
be faced by the ministers publicly and not be 
reserved for the baiting of theological novices. 

It ought not to be necessary in this day and 
generation to argue that the authority of the 
Bible does not rest upon a temporary intervention 
of deity in human thinking, but upon the unpre- 
cedented and unequalled way in which the Biblical 
writers caught and imparted this spiritual in- 
crement which is lifting experience into higher 
planes. Our interest in this chapter is in the 
present and future actuality of this energy whose 
influence is found not only within the covers of 
the Bible but is both universal and eternal. This 
is a great thought, as we saw in the last chapter, 
if it only gets hold of one. 

The spirit moveth, we are told, where it listeth. 
This means that it cannot be cornered by a 
Council, nor restricted to impartation through a 
laying on of hands, nor kept in an apostolic suc- 
cession. It cannot be bound up in the leaves of 
a book. 

Wherever the spirit appears it is to be recog- 
nized, not by traditional accompaniments, not by 
its source, but by its intrinsic merit. There is the 
promise that the spirit of truth will be the guide 



The Communion of the Holy Spirit 123 

into all truth, and it is very unwise Christianity 
to give up the actual communion of the Holy 
Spirit for the sake of an easy argument for the 
authority of the Scriptures. It is unwise Chris- 
tianity so to account for the authority of the 
Scriptures that there can be no present-day com- 
munion of the Holy Spirit. 



We have, both in this and in the preceding 
chapter, spoken confidently of the universal and 
eternal influence of the divine spirit. Such words 
perhaps call for a little expansion. What is 
meant by a divine spirit? 

A force is known by its results. The revolving 
hands of a watch give information of a coiled 
spring. The force of gravitation is evidenced by 
the rising and by the falling of bodies. 

In quite the same scientific way there is evi- 
dence of an energy in the world which is different 
from the mechanical forces. There is an energy 
which produces what we call advance and im- 
provement, which has transformed matter into 
mind and mind into soul. 

The law of accident is confessedly unequal to 
the task of accounting for the continued better- 
ment from original star dust. 

There has been in the whole evolutionary 
development a straining toward melioration. 
Nature is not merely a dead play of atoms ; there 



124 The Unexplored Self 

is ever a striving toward beauty and charm. 
Each stage of development is higher than the 
preceding. The last of nature's products are the 
most interesting and wonderful. Everywhere 
there is evidence of a something that makes for 
higher values. 

So a babe is more than a composite of his 
parents and his ancestors. There is a non- 
ancestral quantity which makes him unique. 
A man's biography, his life history, is more than 
the sum of his inheritances and his environment. 
There has been, underneath his own personality, 
a reaching up toward perfection. 



All of these external evidences, however, are 
entirely secondary in comparison with the evi- 
dence that is borne by the personal experience. 
Within himself a man finds dissatisfaction with 
the low and the weak. He craves life and that 
more abundantly. He looks to greater perfection. 
He demands advance. 

Conscience has been made a by-word because 
too often called upon as a deus ex machina to 
teach the soul. I do not think that conscience can 
be defined as an infallible instructor. It does not 
say, This is right; but it is ever asking, Is this 
right? — Is this good enough? It is the unquiet 
factor in the make-up which urges onward. 

Those who rely upon the evidence of evolution 



The Communion of the Holy Spirit 125 

alone to establish a spirit within the world have 
missed the really convincing witness which is the 
man's own self. 

For a long time, men, in seeing a pebble fall to 
the ground, assumed that that event was isolated; 
and so in regard to a second pebble and a third. 
Then came the penetration which proclaimed 
that there was a single force acting upon every- 
thing, giving a resultant tendency to fall. Thus 
was stated the universal law of gravitation. 

It is possible to think likewise that the impulse 
which any particular man has for better things is 
isolated, is an impulse in himself alone; and so in 
regard to the aspiration of a second man and so 
with the yearning of a third man. But in time 
there comes the teaching that it is a single force 
that is present in all men striving to push them 
up. This states the indwelling of the Holy 
Spirit. 



One may name and define this increment in the 
world's life as the Will. Some split the single 
world-spirit into a gradation of forces. They 
start with the mechanical and go step by step 
through the chemical and the crystalline to the 
vital. Then, they say, appear the blind instincts, 
then the likings, then love, and finally faith which 
is a sense of the ultimate end. 



126 The Unexplored Self 

Some call the spirit an inherent purposive- 
ness in things. Some say the force acts upon 
nature from the outside, others that it is the 
heart of nature. Some say that the force acts 
upon a man from the outside, others that the 
force is the very man of very man, struggling for 
expression. 

The naming of the force is less important than 
the fact, and I believe we are justified in saying 
that the entire thinking world to-day is coming 
to recognize the fact, to recognize at least a 
plus, an addition to the physical and chemical 
energies. 

The aim of Christian inspiration is to obtain the 
full benefit of this force. Christianity believes 
that there is working out something worth while 
in the world and therefore speaks of it as the 
divine spirit, the Holy Spirit. While the Old 
Testament regarded it as exceptional, in the New 
Testament it becomes a recognized personal aid 
which can be depended upon, and can be a per- 
manent asset in the religious life of him who will 
have faith in it. 

We may repeat with new confidence that no 
man needs to stand or to fight alone. There is 
within him the same patient force which hewed 
the world out of chaos, which is bringing the 
flowers out of the black earth, which is taming 
the beast into the man and is converting man 
into a child of the Most High. 



The Communion of the Holy Spirit 127 

7 

A striking illustration of the confidence which 
the early Christians, "the Church Fathers," had 
in the continued leading of the Holy Spirit, is the 
daring way in which they set one side a part of the 
Mosaic Decalogue and substituted a custom of 
their own origination. With no accompaniment of 
portents there came to them a deeper revelation 
which superseded that of Sinai. I refer to the ob- 
servance of Sunday in place of the Sabbath Day. 

This was not a mere unimportant modifying of 
the Fourth Commandment. We keep the Jewish 
Sabbath neither in the hours, nor in the day, nor 
in the principle. Our Lord's Day is a day of 
uprising, of resurrection. 

The old Sabbath provided new strength by ces- 
sation from labor; our Sunday finds labor light- 
ened by the thought of a goal. The Sabbath gave 
rest from work; Sunday furnishes zest in work. 
A day spent in sleeping will fulfil the require- 
ments of the Sabbath ; worship and a new contact 
with God are necessary for keeping Sunday. 

I mention this as an instance where an observ- 
ance is authoritative not because it is backed by 
proof texts but because it is sanctioned by the 
inner consciousness of every one who responds to 
the improvement impulse. 

Christianity would not have one go into the 
battles of morality without obtaining the in- 



128 The Unexplored Self 

spiration that comes from the fact of a great 
enterprise. 

It would say, Let a man recognize his yearning 
for better things as a part of a great world yearn- 
ing, the great World Impulse. 

It would say, Let him respond to the inward 
suggestions to service and kindliness, for it is 
to engage on the side of God's eternal effort. 

It would say, Let him speak what the spirit tells 
him to speak, and if it is truly the spirit's prompt- 
ing, his words shall have a place among the 
treasured words of the Book of Books. 



This Gospel meaning of inspiration, of the 
communion of the Holy Spirit, puts a reality into 
prayer which liturgies and forms of worship are 
in danger of losing. 

When I was a theological student we learned 
that there were five elements in prayer. These 
were, if I remember them aright, adoration, 
thanksgiving, petition, intercession, and confession. 
But no one taught me, at least in any way to 
make me see it, that the principal part in prayer 
was not the human part but the divine part, not a 
speaking but a being spoken to. When prayer 
becomes a true communion, it is this inner yearn- 
ing which we have called an energy, a divine spirit 
— it is this inner impulse that is finding voice. 

We may reverently say that when a man speaks 



The Communion of the Holy Spirit 129 

out his best wishes and his noblest desires, it is 
in an actual sense the divine which, as well as can 
be through the particular earthly medium, is ut- 
tering the world yearning. 

Petition has its place and one who believes in a 
personal spirit which permeates the world will no 
more refrain from preferring a request lest he be 
attempting to interrupt the immutable law of 
causality than he would refrain from making a 
request to a human being for the same reason. 
Those who believe that a man's acts are in an 
unbreakable cause-effect chain, nevertheless make 
requests and thank their fellow-beings. But 
prayer is more than petition, adoration, and the 
rest. It is communion — a mutual communion 
through the Holy Spirit with the God of all. God 
as well as man speaks. 



CHAPTER XIII 



THE ATROPHY OF DEATH 



IN treating the subject of immortality I shall not 
attempt to rehearse the usual so-called proofs. 
There are many hints and indications, not 
convincing separately, but which, when put 
together as so many strands, make for some minds 
a support of belief. A rope of many strands it is 
not my intention to weave. 

Our attempt will be to present such a view of 
life that the tomb will be seen empty through 
the very potency of personality which earth can- 
not entomb. It is the view of life which deter- 
mines the view of death. 

When life is looked at as a small and inconse- 
quential thing and when existence is viewed as a 
mere incident, then almost any object is sufficient 
to act as a barrier and from such a standpoint the 
doctrine of immortality seems indeed presump- 
tuous. But when life and its consciousness are 
seen as stretching up into the reality of things, 
then the physical estimates and the earthy limi- 

130 



The Atrophy of Death 131 

tations dwindle and become insignificant. A 
rock can stay the pebble's flight, but the momen- 
tum of a star will catch up and carry along a 
planetary system. 

It is the large view of life which swallows up the 
obstacle of death. When life is seen to be a 
swelling impetuous flood, then the mill-dam which 
would have been a complete block to the trickling 
rivulet is overwhelmed in oblivion. The garden 
wall that bounds the world for the unfledged 
nestling is of small importance to the winged 
child of the air. 

The mistake is made of trying to establish first 
the fact of immortality and from this basis to 
prove the value of life. In this way both the 
immortality and the value are placed in jeopardy. 
Christ's way and the right way is to make one 
appreciate the greatness of life first. If this 
greatness is once grasped, then the impossibility 
of death as the goal and the end, appears at once. 



What we shall try to do then, is to make this 
Christian point of view clear. This means that 
experience is to be enlarged beyond curtail- 
ment through corporal dissolution. When the 
sense of the preciousness of life has come first, 
faith finds wings to rise above and beyond the 
grave. 

We spoke of this as the Christian point of view, 



132 The Unexplored Self 

because in this teaching of the individual worth of 
man as the child of God, Christ struck out a new 
path and founded a new religion. When he 
showed that the individual life is of great and of 
divine worth, death was swallowed up in victory. 

This is perhaps one of the primary meanings of 
Jesus' own voluntary sacrifice. Greater than the 
fact of death were the demands of his larger life. 
Physical death may therefore even contribute to 
the larger life and enable one to live more. The 
purpose of life may require physical death for its 
carrying out. 

From this point of view is caught the richer 
meaning of the exultant cry : O death, where is 
thy sting? O death, where is thy victory? In 
the pagan world death had been spoken of as the 
conqueror of all. Death had been the crushing 
rejoinder to every aspiration and to every lover of 
life. From the new point of view death itself was 
impressed into the service of a larger life that 
flooded into and filled up all the days and years of 
earthly existence. From the new point of view 
the great devourer was devoured. 

The same tidings comes to Prometheus in the 
song in Moody's Fire-Bringer: 

Of wounds and sore defeat 
I made my battle stay. 
Winged sandals for my feet 
I wove of my delay. 
Of weariness and fear 
I made my shouting spear. 



The Atrophy of Death 133 

Of loss and doubt and dread 
And swift oncoming doom, 
I made a helmet for my head 
And a floating plume. 
From the shutting mist of death, 
From the failure of the breath, 
I made a battle horn to blow 
Across the fields of over-throw. 



When the distinction between the Christian 
teaching of immortality and the usual philosophi- 
cal arguments, such as that from the indivisibility 
of the soul, is considered a little carefully, it will 
be seen how much more satisfying and how much 
more stimulating is the standpoint of the Gospel. 

The scientific discussions of immortality, even 
if convincing, leave men indifferent because they 
do not include the idea of preciousness anywhere. 
They give mere indestructibility. Few would 
care for eternal existence if there were to be noth- 
ing but continued existence in it. 

The Christian measurement of life is not in 
terms of long measure alone. It includes breadth 
and height. The word immortality leads men to 
look at life in one dimension only. The Kingdom 
of Heaven shows life extending in every dimen- 
sion. If resurrection means merely an extension 
of life in the direction where death had seemed to 
cut it off, the message of resurrection could easily 
be questioned as a doubtful blessing. It is the 



134 The Unexplored Self 

something better in the resurrection which makes 
us look forward to it so gladly. 

Christ's raising of Lazarus from the dead, for 
instance, was a feeble boon, bringing him and his 
friends little benefit, compared with the fuller life 
which it was Christ's mission to proclaim to the 
world. 

Martha, the sister of Lazarus, was inclined to 
think of life in a single dimension and said of her 
brother: I know that he shall rise again in the 
resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her: 
I am the resurrection and the life. 

Jesus' work was not to perpetuate longevity, 
but it was to expand man's being into the higher 
reaches of the divine, to divinaie man, if the word 
may be allowed. The divinated life was the 
Christian life and over such a life death has no 
more dominion. 

The word immortality is therefore a petty word 
as compared with the more abundant life which 
Christ meant men to appreciate. 

If some one should sometime discover an elixir 
of life to postpone katabolism indefinitely, his gift 
to man might be less than a blessing — might even 
be a curse. The helpful gift to man is not so much 
length of life as the high and the broad life, the 
life with meaning. 

I remember that as children, we used to hear the 
Turkish soldiers in the garrison shout in unison: 
"May our Padishah live a thousand years." 
Three times in succession was this cry given 



The Atrophy of Death 135 

every evening as a part of the regular drill. The 
absurdity of the thousand years has brought them 
to modify the cry so that now the shout is : " May 
our Padishah live many years," but even so the 
fulfilment of the request is not an unmixed 
advantage. The leader of the people needs not 
so much length of days as to be touched with the 
spirit of sympathy for the lowest and with the 
enthusiasm of perceiving a great preciousness in 
each soul. 

Christ, therefore, was justified in saying to 
Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. 
Martha was looking forward dimly to a remote 
day, but he had made the heavenly life a possi- 
bility of the immediate present. If men caught 
the meaning of the Fatherhood of God, the new 
life could begin for them at once. He accordingly 
continues with the words which to many have 
seemed so difficult: Whosoever believeth on me 
though he were dead yet shall he live, and who- 
soever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. 



When the onward progress of anything is inter- 
rupted by an obstacle, one way to do is to remove 
the obstacle. Another way is so to increase the 
mass of the advancing force that the obstacle is 
lost sight of. This was Christ's way of over- 
coming death. 

The special point which is to be made is that 



136 The Unexplored Self 

any argument for life after death, not based on the 
good of life, is unconvincing and that the good of 
life does not depend on immortality but is the 
basis for the hope of immortality. It is belief in 
the significance of the present existence which pre- 
cedes faith in a larger life above this life. 

It is a difficult belief at times and yet a valid 
one, and the core of the glad tidings of great joy 
is this very meaning of existence. It is a belief in 
the good of life but not a blind belief, blind to the 
pain of life. It is not a superficial belief which has 
smoothed over the evils. It is a faith in life which 
remains unquenched even though all the vials of 
earth's sorrows be poured upon it. 

Such a faith means the saving of the world. 
When men believe that things well done are 
greatly worth doing, salvation is at hand. That 
men have a personal part in the purpose of things 
is the message to mankind of Jesus' life and death, 
and it is this God-relation which rolls the stone 
away from the door of the tomb. 

We accept Christ's resurrection from the dead, 
therefore, not on the testimony of Galilean Jews. 
The assurance is not built upon the evidence of 
witnesses who cannot be subjected to cross- 
examination. We know that the tomb failed to 
retain his spirit, not because the women looked 
and saw it empty. We believe in the resurrection 
of Christ because he has convinced us of the per- 
manence of love and the eternity of good. 

When through participation we learn his love 



The Atrophy of Death 137 

for men, the reality of men and of ourselves comes 
as a new insight. The divine in man begins to 
tower up above material things. Coax it, torture 
it, crucify it, yet the self can remain serene and the 
goodness unchanged. When we live these things, 
then we begin to know that holiness and virtue and 
righteousness are as real in the world as are iron 
and lead. 



How shall one set to work to prove immortality? 

There is no course of argument which of itself 
can bring one to accept the divinity of man. 
Each one must experience it for himself through a 
life of love, and such a life is its own argument for 
an eternity with a breadth and height as well as a 
length. 

There are no means of proving this larger 
immortality for which the phrase Kingdom of 
Heaven is more adequate. Is one without the 
confidence, and would he have it, let him step out 
into the actual life of yearning and hope. Let 
him, without ignoring the shortcomings and bit- 
terness of life, learn its sweetness and its satis- 
factions. Let the tide of a nobler and a better 
being surge up till it flows into and brims over the 
cup of his own existence, and involuntarily he will 
find his spirit looking confidently up with an 
assurance that the best is yet to be. 

Realizing what a small part of existence he 



138 The Unexplored Self 

knows, and without any dogmatism as to the pre- 
cise form which the fulfilment of earth's meaning 
is to take, he will, nevertheless, know that he has 
already entered into the eternal worth. Weak as 
he is, he will know himself as dominating the 
planets, suns, and stars, a part of the same mind 
which brought order out of chaos. 

The usual objections will appear in a different 
light. The immensity of space, rather than 
depressing him, will make him exult the more. 
The multitude of humanity will contribute to his 
exaltation. The intelligence of the innumerable 
beasts will make him rejoice in the power of 
progress. His relation to a less valuable past 
will but contribute to his acceptance of a more 
valuable future. 

As the sense of the value of life increases so will 
increase the need for its consummation, and death 
will become a subordinate incident in a more 
inclusive whole. 



This faith is unscientific, says one? It is the 
same faith that enables an astronomer to know an 
unseen planet which is needed to account for 
movements of heavenly bodies. The chemist's 
need for a certain element to explain certain 
phenomena is the exact measure of the reality of 
that element. The need for the imponderable 
ether is the measure of its existence. In the world 



The Atrophy of Death 139 

of science the need determines the reality. In the 
same way, the fuller the human life which one 
lives the more does he know the need of a larger 
life to round it out, and just so real does the larger 
life become to him. 

This is not mysticism or rhapsody. It is com- 
mon-sense. It starts with the axiom of the 
preciousness of the individual man. The whole 
Christian system is a development of that 
axiom. 

Our purpose can only be to indicate the basis 
and the method for the faith in immortality. 
The faith itself comes from the personal appre- 
ciation of the value of effort and of the value of 
kindliness. This knowledge is personal but it 
may be as real as anything in experience. 

As we saw in speaking of the death of Christ, 
a death like his becomes the most convincing 
argument for the dominance of effort over physical 
death. In a less exalted way, however, is found 
forced upon the attention the fact of worth in the 
fact of death. From the very sense of the loss 
which comes when a friend is taken away, may be 
argued the actuality of the good that was there. 
The shadow of death is therefore but a proof of the 
light which can cast the shadow. 

If some object were taken up toward the sun, 
as it went toward the light the following eyes 
would see that which had been a bright object 
turn into blackness and emptiness, but the very 



140 The Unexplored Self 

blackness and emptiness would be evidence that 
the light was shining on the other side. 

Our discussion has not been an intricate one. 
We have not tried to trace reasonings which only 
the learned can follow. The Christian basis for 
immortality is one to which the unlearned will 
respond as naturally as the scholar. What is 
called for is knowledge from personal experience 
of the supremacy of love. 



In closing it will not be out of place to suggest 
an analogy which is something more than an 
analogy. As against the temptation to measure 
human accomplishments by the magnitude and 
not by the exactitude, there is a sense in which it 
may be said that lives here are projected upon a 
canvas, an immense unseen canvas. It is some- 
thing like the way in which the pictures on a lan- 
tern slide are thrown upon a curtain. 

One who was engaged in making the lantern 
slides might be tempted to shirk the details and be 
careless about the fine angles and the little dis- 
tortions. It would be in place to speak a word of 
caution, that the petty marks, seeming so insignif- 
icant, will take on a different importance when 
seen in the destined size. The integrity and 
honesty, the right spirit in the daily round of little 
duties will appear in a very different way when 
thrown upon the canvas of eternity. 



The Atrophy of Death 141 

This analogy is in line with the thought that 
there is a height and breadth to this life as well as 
length. It cannot be described in terms of earth. 
Whenever the great motives enter into its acts, 
this life must be called the Kingdom of Heaven, 
and when a man has understood the Kingdom of 
Heaven, death is no more. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE ARMOR OF LIGHT 



THE main body of Christian teaching has 
already been covered. There are, how- 
ever, many supplementary points which reflect 
light upon the method and purpose of Christ- 
ianity. 

The words, the armor of light, are used by Paul 
writing to the Romans in the appeal : Let us put 
on the armor of light. The subject, then, breathes 
a militant spirit. 

There are many who become suspicious at the 
first hint of an appeal to the emotions. They dis- 
trust excitement, and exhortation is preachy. 
They exalt calmness and deliberation. They pre- 
fer evolution to revolution. They are annoyed 
at a call to arms. 

There is no pleasure in being a prophet of dis- 
aster, but one of the gravest dangers of to-day is 
the prevalent complacent optimism. Difficult is 

it to make people understand that the world may 

142 



The Armor of Light 143 

grow worse, that inventions and enlightenment 
are compatible with decadence. 

Men have too easily thrown themselves back 
upon the theory of evolution, supposing that 
according to that doctrine, progress is assured. 
They forget that often and often the fittest to sur- 
vive have not been the noblest. Advance is not 
inevitable. An entire species or an entire race 
may follow natural causes and degenerate. 

Wealth and resources bring special evils and 
dangers, unless there develops a commensurate 
direction and control of the new power. Indif- 
ferentism to the claims of righteousness bodes 
more ill to-day than does scepticism or atheism. 
If ever there was a need for the war spirit and for 
the fighting instinct, it is now. 



Monarchical tyranny and mediaeval blood- 
thirstiness are things of the past; but it is no 
exaggeration to say that thousands and thou- 
sands of young men and young women in our land 
are being taken away to lives of wretchedness. 
No fiery patriot ever had more cause for cry- 
ing out at the ruthlessness of the oppressor and 
for proclaiming the need of resolute and instant 
arming. 

If a man has a desire for unemotional Christian- 
ity let him pass from history to the tales and 
myths of monsters and dragons which required 



144 The Unexplored Self 

annual doles of human lives and justified deeds of 
prowess and daring, and then let him see if the 
slavery and misery to-day do not justify the 
ringing of the tocsin. 

Let a man look back to his childhood days, if 
he must needs go so far, and recall any stories 
of ogres and giants which awakened within him 
quick sympathy for the victims, where he eagerly 
armed himself with the rescuer and avenger, and 
then let him ask if those fabulous descriptions of 
torment went beyond the actual events in modern 
civilization. 

It is well to be reasonable, but under the circum- 
stances and with the knowledge that the leave- 
things-alone doctrine will not bring improvement, 
the most reasonable thing is to raise the cry of 
battle. 

The parent is in a position to tell how often it 
becomes a fight for the child and how often the 
child is lost. The preachers and workers will tell 
how often it is a fight for the men and women 
and how seldom men and women are won back. 
The self will tell how overwhelming at times is 
the power of passion, and how treacherous is the 
assault of temptation. 

It is indifferentism and false optimism that has 
wrung the heart of every lover of his people. 
Men to-day cry, peace, peace, when there is no 
peace. The appeal of Christianity should, if 
possible, be sounded out on a trumpet to start the 



The Armor of Light 145 

blood bounding through the veins and to make men 
leap as soldiers, to follow the patriot of humanity. 



Aside from its militant spirit, there is contained 
in the subject of this chapter a disclosure of an 
important method in Christian warfare. 

The word armor to-day, instead of calling to 
mind a field of battle, brings to memory silent and 
musty halls, museums where the relics of the past 
are exhibited. It quite probably invokes long rows 
of awkward figures, curiously clad and equipped, 
stiff, rigid, and heavy, fossils of extinct activities. 

There are certainly many to whom the call to 
put on the armor of light is an appeal from the 
dead past. They like the valor of the Christian 
knight, but think his accoutrements out of date, 
not modern enough to meet present-day require- 
ments. 

"We have new social trends. We have statis- 
tics. We understand criminology. We have a 
view of the whole panorama of history. We have 
a science of religion. We are able therefore to 
find a better rallying cry, and to devise up-to- 
date methods. Why hark back to this ancient 
appeal ?" 

I had a friend, a graduate of a great university, 
one who had taken his master's degree in phi- 
losophy magna cum laude — a friend who had been 



146 The Unexplored Self 

taught to believe that the name of Jesus would 
fade more and more as society faced new demands 
and found new materials. 

Many there are like him who think that we are 
in a position to work out a universal and improved 
religion, one which shall be as superior to any of 
the ancient religions as modern projectiles are to 
primitive slings and arrows. 

It is because there is this very demand for pro- 
gressive ways of dealing with evil, the common 
enemy, that the words of our subject are peculiarly 
illuminating. They show the modernity and 
eternity of the Christian principles. 

The word armor has in it indeed the smack of 
archaic times, but the phrase, the armor of light, 
brings out the timeless character of the Christian 
method of warfare. 

The phrase does not mean bright armor nor 
shining armor. It means what it says : the armor 
of light — take light as your weapon of offence and 
defence. 



The appeal is in line with the very latest 
methods of warfare, whether military, hygienic, 
or educational; whether social, commercial, or 
religious. The method of Christianity, far from 
being obsolete, is actually the most efficient to-day 
and will be increasingly efficient to-morrow and 
in the morrow of morrows. 



The Armor of Light 147 

For modern iron-clads and for fortresses, the 
great search-lights are indispensable in guarding 
against attack. The powerful rays pass over the 
surface of the waters, or peer into the coves and 
bays along the shore, or follow the roads and 
pierce into the nooks and valleys. They scan the 
country for miles around and thus turn its dark- 
ness into day. 

At the seat of war I have looked out at a dark 
horizon even thirty miles away and seen bursting 
over the brow of the hills and shooting up toward 
the zenith, like the gleams of an aurora borealis, 
the great rays from invisible search-lights, showing 
that the enemy from forts on the other side was 
keeping careful watch on that line of hills lest a 
night attack be attempted. 

In coping with the present day explosives the 
armor of light means as much to the battle-ships 
and the fortresses as do the steel plates and 
bastions. 

There is, therefore, here a modern adaptation. 
The need of light for guidance is familiar, because 
in ancient times was written: Thy word is a 
lamp unto my way and a light unto my path. 
The need of light for warmth and for life is known ; 
but this is an idea too little associated with 
Christianity, the use of light for armor. 

While the natural bent is to trust in darkness as 
the better weapon, and the primary impulse is 
burrowing and hiding, it is the impulse of those 



148 The Unexplored Self 

unconfident in their strength. The better method 
is to find safety in openness, in frankness, in light. 



There have been periods when some spokesmen 
of Christianity, losing faith in the victory of right, 
have feared the truth, have opposed enlighten- 
ment as dangerous, and have dreaded the dis- 
coveries of science. There have been periods of 
thought censorship, of secret conclaves, of inquisi- 
torial darkness. 

There may be some to-day who avoid reasoning 
and study, but true Christianity has ever con- 
sidered enlightenment its sure weapon and de- 
fence. Its power and initiative perhaps coming 
from elsewhere, its trustiest armor is light. 

Its first step has been to teach men to read. It 
has put its safety into the keeping of schools and 
colleges. It has spread broadcast learning and 
education. 

Its counsel is, be free to look upon all sides of 
life. Greet as an ally every searcher after truth. 
Teach men to know the truth and the truth shall 
make them free. 

It accepts the old Delphic idea: explore the 
self, and finds the resulting knowledge leading one 
to know life, to know men, and to know God. 

Only through lack of trust in Christianity arise 
fears because some men are studying the Bible as 
a book of history. Only those who have missed 



The Armor of Light 149 

the spirit of Christ shrink from the alembic of 
science. 

Christianity can be brought up to the wider 
outlook of the most advanced university. Its 
message is also for the profoundest questioners 
of existence. It will ever use the accoutrements 
of the broadest knowledge and the clearest insight 
into reality. Its most effective armor is the 
armor of light. 

It is a trite remark that the forked lightning of 
Jupiter cannot compare in effectiveness with the 
rays of the sun, for enlightenment can of itself 
destroy evils and end suffering. 

Those who would crush and massacre are at 
great pains to keep the facts from being known. 
But send a Montefiore to Damascus, let the world 
know of the Bulgarian outrages, have George 
Kennan report on things in Siberia, show the fact 
of cruelty and misrule in the Congo, and already 
there is a beginning of amelioration. 

Would one succor the child-laborer, let him 
bring out the facts to stare the country in the face. 
Let wrongs be known and felt, and remedial legis- 
lation is an easy thing. 



The upheavals from the recent business and 
political investigations show that though the first 
effects of exposing evils may prove disturbing and 



150 The Unexplored Self 

wracking, and though we may distrust the men 
with the muck-rakes if they are intent on making 
private gain out of the exposures — yet in the 
long run the effect of bringing into the open 
unwholesome conditions in the sweat-shops and 
factories, of bringing into the open immoral con- 
ditions in the crowded tenements, is beneficial. 

If light be turned into the dark cellars and 
covered passages, there will be a scampering of 
vermin and an extinction of disease bacilli. To 
realize the truth of all this we need not go back to 
any particular scandal; the events of almost any 
year show how evil depends on secrecy — back 
doors, hidden transactions, and muddied waters. 

Evil men reform when there is a likelihood that 
their schemes will be brought to the public view. 
The works of darkness fear light more than they 
do laws and legislation. 

In the subject then, there is a call to adopt an 
armor which will enable men to see their true 
allegiance and their true enemies, their true 
duty and their real dangers. It is an appeal to 
throw what may be called the Gospel of Light into 
the lurking places of wrong. 

The use of publicity has been seriously urged 
by some in high councils as a cure for our un- 
equally divided wealth. 

The theory is that open accounts will prevent 
the disproportionate success of a primary advan- 
age. The theory has not in mind the prevention 



The Armor of Light 151 

of illegal transactions through this publicity, 
rather to give an equal chance to all in activity 
and competition. 

Objections more or less strong probably occur 
at once to urge against this remedy of publicity 
in business life, but we would not be fair to our 
subject if its mention were omitted. 



What has been said so far is important for 
a right understanding of Christianity's attitude 
toward science and for appreciating the work of 
Christianity in society. There is, however, a 
meaning which is personal. 

There are many, perhaps more than is usually 
realized, who as individuals are trusting to the 
armor of darkness — saying: " There is no need 
for one to join openly with any band of Christians. 
If he publicly declares himself he will be in the 
broad light an easy target for criticism." 

There are many who think to themselves: 
"All men do wrong and I may do wrong; then 
better to remain under cover.' ' 

Some have a new beatitude: "Blessed is he 
who adopts no standards, for he will never be 
found lacking." And they continue: "It is 
safer to promise the self alone and to make no 
outward profession; any failure then will be less 
conspicuous." 

The protection of secrecy is the instinctive 



152 The Unexplored Self 

thought and often is it said: "Some things I do 
which others might consider misdeeds; these are 
better done covertly. As a whole I will choose 
the shelter of darkness." 

In the stories of the old frontier warfare the 
best defence was not the darkness of night-time, 
but the light of day. The pioneer looked with 
dread on the approach of night. And when night 
came the place for the camp was not a hidden 
nook but the centre of an open plain. It is this 
frontiersman attitude toward danger that is the 
best counsel. 

Natural is it for men to shrink from taking a 
stand in the open. They imagine that hostile 
eyes will be spying them out from trees and 
bushes around. They imagine that hostile hands 
are eagerly fixing their arrows in the bowstrings, 
ready to shoot at the first opportunity. 

The advice is: Be bold and brave, courageous 
and confident, frank and daring; walk in the 
light; let not timidity become the ally of the 
lower nature; do not slink along in the paths of 
concealment; leave darkness to the companions 
of darkness. 

There is a similar thought in the words : Walk 
as children of light and have no companionship 
with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather 
even convict them, for the things which are done 
by them in secret it is a sin even to speak of. 

In John's Gospel we find the words of Christ: 



The Armor of Light 153 

And this is the condemnation that light is come 
into the world and men loved darkness rather than 
light because their deeds were evil. For every- 
one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither 
cometh to the light lest his deeds should be 
reproved. 



8 



There is nothing so discouraging to the powers 
of evil as to see one walking in the open. If a 
man can be brought into a position where he 
fears to expose to view some part of his life, that 
man's fall is almost a foregone conclusion. 

The sin and corruption of his whole system will 
gather at that secret part and to that hidden spot 
will be drawn everything that can taint his 
character. From that point of vantage will be sent 
out the poisonous germs to disease the entire life. 

In this lies the benefit of confession. Here is 
the good of making a clean breast and of saying, I 
have been in the wrong. Such a confession 
brings one into the open; it is putting on the 
armor of light, a guarantee of safety. 

This part of the appeal is not to those who are 
kept back by intellectual doubts, not especially to 
those who are kept back by pride. It is an appeal 
to the timid, to those who are among temptations 
— temptations to moral laxity, to irreligion, to 
indifference. 



154 The Unexplored Self 

It is an appeal to those who were formerly, 
perhaps, identified as trying to live the disciple's 
life, but are now preferring not to take an open 
stand; to those who wish to be "free" to do little 
misdeeds if they should so desire, "free" to depart 
from the service of God, "free" to forget their 
fellows. It is an appeal to those who are debating 
whether to continue undeclared or to take a stand. 
To such men and women, to such boys and girls 
comes the call: It is a time of war; put on the 
armor of light. 

The appeal should meet with response from 
every lover of humanity, and from every one who 
believes in light. This last thought leads over to 
the next chapter. Is Christianity a Gospel of 
Light? 



CHAPTER XV 

THE LIFTED DOME 



WHEN one is out on a bright June day and the 
hills and the valleys are sharply cut, when 
the trees and the grass seem to thrust themselves 
upon his attention, and the brilliant lights and 
shades almost hurl themselves at his eyes, he 
is tempted to ask, Could anything in the way 
of vision be added? When, however, his inquir- 
ing eye turns upward it finds hanging there a 
canopy. 

On duller days the covering looks silken so that 
a pair of scissors belike might snip it away and dis- 
close what is beyond. At other times it is a beaten 
covering, a great dome of metal, which one can 
look behind only by getting outside of the world 
entirely. The brighter the day the more impene- 
trable is the dome. 

A sunlit stretch of country delights the eye with 
the wide horizon which it permits, but overhead 
the dome strangely shuts the vision in. At night 
darkness blots the landscape out, but lo, the 

155 



156 The Unexplored Self 

impenetrable dome is lifted off and the view is 
wondrously extended. 

The point which I wish to make out of our sub- 
ject is that with the dome lifted at night-time 
comes the widest vision; that smaller lights near 
by can swallow up immense luminaries ; and that 
brightness does not determine reality. It is a 
partial solution of the conflict between reason and 
faith. 

I remember, as a boy, reading a story in which 
the heroine had always slept through the night so 
that she was acquainted only with the light of 
day. I remember the terror with which she was 
said to have seen for the first time the approach of 
night. It is easy to imagine that such an one 
would scout the idea of seeing more in the dark- 
ness, of taking away the sun in order to penetrate 
into the blue dome. * 

The noonday suggestion would rather be to 
throw more light into the sky ; to increase the 
reflectors; if possible, to turn some great balloon 
into an electric ball of flame and for telescopic 
purposes send it up into the blue sky. The sug- 
gestion would be to create a second sun. 

The cry would be light, more light. 



My attention was called to this subject by a 
college poem with that very title: " Light, more 



The Lifted Dome 157 

Light." It is a common cry of the age. I 
thought of the anxiety of the heroine in the 
story who knew not the vaster visions of the 
night-time. 

With the cry for light we are all in sympathy. 
There is a quick response on our part when we 
read Tennyson's words : 

But what am I? 
An infant crying in the night; 
An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry. 

There are, however, lights which prevent vision 
as well as lights which permit vision. I have 
sometimes sat upon a platform with a light 
directly in front which shut out the whole audience 
and have wished that it were possible to take 
away the light so that I might see the people. 

Now this is no mere analogy to which we have 
been working up. It is a principle of conscious- 
ness and has its repetition in all the functions of 
perception. 

In the realm of vision the principle may be 
stated as follows: A strong light prevents the 
perception of fainter lights, although the fainter 
lights may often be of greater importance. 

The message is that those who trust only the 
light of the daytime should watch the miracle 
when the sunlight dies away, the blue dome is 
slowly lifted off, and the whole heavenly host 
begins to declare the glory of the universe. 



158 The Unexplored Self 

f" With the dome lifted off the standards which 
mark earth's distances take on a different mean- 
ing, and even the distances between the planets 
are subordinate to larger circuits. Then the 
eternal verities come to view and the star appears 
by which compasses may be fixed and terrestrial 
directions be verified. 

This message of the lifted dome is, in view of 
the present-day morbid and frenzied demand for 
light, more light, a vital one. Men are employing 
the wrong emphasis to find out about the more 
spiritual experiences. 



The demand for light, more light, is perhaps 
most intense and dominating during the period 
of youth when life-determining problems are up 
for settlement. Yet even after practical interests 
have crowded it into the background, it remains 
never wholly given up. 

Those who are no longer in the eager days of 
the first intellectual enlightenment, still turn their 
eyes to this point or that as a promise comes of a 
new light that is to let them know why things are ; 
and repeated disappointments are unable to pre- 
vent them from nursing the ultimate hope that 
some time, some day, the light for which humanity 
longs will flame out. 

Perhaps the feeling is less acute than it was in 
Tennyson's day, but it is deeper and more widely 



The Lifted Dome 159 

diffused. It is realized that the mere crying will 
not bring the desired light any more than it will 
bring the moon to the babe. We must either 
travel toward it or develop powers to perceive it ; 
so that our special attention is turned to pre- 
liminary problems. The universal sympathy, 
however, with the ultimate problem remains. 

Even when practical interests have crowded 
back the quest for light, there remains the deter- 
mination to make it primary as soon as less pro- 
found though more immediate wants have been 
satisfied. Those who scoff at philosophy still 
cherish a secret worship for it, not indeed for it as 
it is but for philosophy as it may be. 

Our protest is not against the desire for light. 
The strongest telescopes are pointed in vain unless 
light shines on the object looked at. And the 
most powerful microscopes are useless cylinders 
unless there is a means of throwing the reflection 
up through the lenses. Our quarrel is with the 
indiscriminate, ill-considered cry. 



We have many sources of intellectual enlighten- 
ment. The network of relationship, of objective 
inference, has stood out in the mental firmament 
as does a great luminary, and it is the assurance of 
the relational factor upon which we depend for 
establishing factuality. Its glare, however, is 
become so intense as to obliterate lights less 



160 The Unexplored Self 

cumulative, but for certain purposes not less 
important. 

There are many realities which become not less 
real but less distinct when contrasted with the 
strongly focusing power of sequence and adduc- 
tion. There are many teachings of the instinct, 
of love, of the emotions, which become lost in the 
bright reflection of scientific analysis. 

I can readily believe that analysis sufficiently 
protracted and reasoning sufficiently intense 
could blot out not only the sense of floral and 
rural beauty, but the pleasure of food and the pain 
of a toothache, not only patriotism and ambition, 
but also filial love, mother love, and all the deepest 
yearnings of experience. 

When thinkers trust so to the world seen under 
the concentrative lights as the only world which 
has any claim to reality, I feel that in taking 
brightness as the measure of truth these men have 
forgotten brightness to be a dependent variable. 

As a result they miss the profounder enlighten- 
ment. Many of the more far-reaching experiences 
are dismissed from consideration as of little sig- 
nificance and the undercurrents of reality are 
ignored. No sufficient recognition is given to the 
world of consciousness. 



In humbler ways than by the lifted dome may 
be illustrated this important principle that the 



The Lifted Dome 161 

comparative feebleness of an experience has no 
direct relation to its actuality. 

One rainy night on East Rock in New Haven, 
I found a phosphorescent stick of wood. The 
stick, which was nearly two feet in length, had 
throughout almost its entire extent the strange 
wavy light that is peculiar to phosphorescent 
bodies. 

The discovery was new to me and filled me with 
delight. I took the stick home and kept it moist 
there for quite a long while. In the daytime it 
was an uninteresting bit of wood, but at night or 
in the dark, it became a glowing tremulous source 
of light, a fountain of radiance. 

Thoreau, in his Maine Woods, describes his 
pleasure at finding some of this phosphorescent 
wood. He says : - J I cut out some little triangular 
chips, and placing them in the hollow of my hand, 
carried them into the camp, waked my companion, 
and showed them to him. They lit up the inside 
of my hand, revealing the lines and the wrinkles 
and appearing exactly like coals of fire raised to 
the white heat. And I saw at once how probably 
the Indian jugglers had imposed on their people 
and on travellers, pretending to hold coals of fire 
in their mouths. ... I little thought that there 
was such a light shining in the wilderness for 
me," 

James Russell Lowell, in commenting on 
Thoreau's lack of observation, says: "Till he 
(Thoreau) went to Maine, he had never seen 



162 The Unexplored Self 

phosphorescent wood, a phenomenon early famil- 
iar to most country boys." 



The principle of discriminative sensibility, for 
which it would be easy to bring forward many more 
illustrations, explains one of the common yet dif- 
ficult thoughts of the Bible. 

In the Gospels Christ, having heard the enthu- 
siastic reports of his missionary disciples, said: 
I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
that thou didst hide these things from the wise and 
understanding and didst reveal them unto babes. 
Similarly Paul writing to the Corinthians says: 
Ye behold your calling, brethren, that not many 
wise after the flesh . . . are called. 

Many have interpreted these passages to mean 
that wisdom was antagonistic to religious faith — 
that a man could not at the same time be a 
scientist and a believer in Christ. 

There have not been wanting apologists of the 
Christian faith who have opposed reason and 
denounced logic. Many disciples have gloried 
in their ignorance as though this made them more 
fit expounders of the Gospel. 

Those who accepted the truth of these passages 
began to question the value of wisdom. Chris- 
tianity seemed openly to boast of its conflict with 
learning and enlightenment. Many a man appar- 
ently forced to choose between the two rivals, 



The Lifted Dome 163 

sadly but resolutely took enlightenment in pref- 
erence to doctrine. 

A true understanding of the principles of light 
and enlightenment, however, shows that the con- 
troversy turns on the placing of the lights rather 
than on essential inconsistencies. 

Multiplying candle power is not the only way 
to advance vision. Damp sticks whose ugliness 
is intensified by being made the centre of calcium 
rays may have it in themselves, nevertheless, to 
discover a still more beautiful radiance of their 
own. 

''Hidden from the wise and revealed unto 
babes.' ' There is no antagonism. But there is 
a filling of the mind and a fixing of the attention 
which prevents understanding. 

Bright illumination is needed to read the dials 
of mundane clocks, and artfully constructed 
search-lights to peer into the dark places of the 
earth. But when we wish to establish the larger 
meridians of measurement and to penetrate the 
cosmic mysteries, the artificial lamps and even the 
solar rays themselves are hindrances rather than 
helps. 

We need the conviction of the sense percep- 
tion and the immediate proof of deduction for 
the day's work. But when we wish to grasp the 
meaning of space and to see the milestones in 
the path to eternity, we are more successful in the 
darkness of night-time. It is then that we feel the 



164 The Unexplored Self 

reality of those dim yearnings and longings which 
inspire us to believe that existence has a value. 



There is one aspect in which philosophy is a 
preventer of knowledge and inevitably so. It 
must have been this aspect which Keats had in 
mind when he wrote : 

Do not all charms fly 
At the mere touch of cold philosophy? 
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: 
We know her woof, her texture; she is given 
In the dull catalogue of common things. 
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, 
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, 
Empty the haunted air and the gnomed mine — 
Unweave a rainbow. 

It is, however, only in one aspect that this is so. 
For those who live among the present marvels of 
her achievements science needs no defence. It 
is really in the interest of greater knowledge, 
therefore, that attention is called to the lifted 
dome and to the everlasting verities, which have 
guided our fathers and are so hung as to be visible 
to all who come in humility as children and babes 
willing to learn. 

There are times when the unreasonable cry for 
more light becomes wearisome and we wish that 
the complainants might appreciate the reasons 



The Lifted Dome 165 

less capable of manipulation which make us 
believe in the reality of love, of character, and 
of personal destiny. 

It almost seems at times as if some of our race 
have approached the fury of flame-crazed moths 
whose inconsiderate passion for light and whose 
distressful flutterings have done grievous damage. 

There are, on the other hand, many who, after 
having lived for years with only the near lights 
and the artificial lights, have been forced through 
some affliction out into the dark and there, to 
their surprise and joy, they have rediscovered the 
ancient lights that will never go out. The depart- 
ing sunshine has lifted the dome and given them 
confidence in kindliness and in God. 



CHAPTER XVI 

DOUBT, A SHRINKING BACK 



THE literature of revelation heaves with the 
effort to define faith. One way to define it 
is to show the opposite and for this purpose we 
have taken for our subject, Doubt. 

A student of animal mentality made the experi- 
ment of shutting up different creatures in cages 
whose doors could be opened from inside through 
simple devices. He found a great difference in 
the attitude toward the new surroundings. Some 
animals at once set to work to discover a way out. 
Others shrank back and seemed to be entirely 
helpless. Animals which in a familiar environ- 
ment might be active and alert became in the 
unfamiliar situation inert. Uncertainty inhibited 
activity. 

There is this difference among men also. If a 
man finds himself entrapped as it were among 
strange dangers and movements, there are two 
ways of facing the situation. He may shrink back 
wondering what is coming next, or else he may 
set about to question and discover. 

1 66 



Doubt, a Shrinking Back 167 

Two scientists, one of whom has a doubting 
temperament and the other a questioning tem- 
perament, are far apart in their value to the 
science. The former is satisfied to check inquiry. 
The latter has a passion for enlarged horizons. 

Two generals, one of whom has a doubting 
disposition and the other a questioning disposi- 
tion, are far apart in their value to an army. 
The one is satisfied with preventing mistakes. 
The other insists on attempts. 

A young man who faces a proposition with a 
doubting mind is as different from one who dis- 
plays a questioning mind as a dead wire is dif- 
ferent from a live one, yet the attitudes are 
grievously confused. 

Many a young man who has been a questioner 
in regard to religious propositions has been per- 
secuted as a doubter; and many a young man 
who has been a doubter has prided himself on 
being a questioner. 



A questioner is a man with resilient trust in the 
knowledge he has, emphasizing the advantage in 
hand. A doubter emphasizes the ignorance, and 
his attitude results in mental inertia. 

The difference is not a matter of the use of 
logic. The doubter may be well versed in logical 
rules. It is in the willingness to try, and for this 
reason some have said that the doubting mind 



1 68 The Unexplored Self 

has a weak will. We shall not go into this discus- 
sion as it might lead us far afield and divert 
attention from the main point. 

The point we are making is that the doubting 
temperament is to be thoughtfully distinguished 
from the questioning. The doubter is under 
no call to grant any basis of truth. It is 
enough for him to block the inquiry. But one 
cannot question without faith, faith in certain 
facts as bases, and he will ere long find himself 
led to new facts. 

The one is passive, negative, destructive. The 
other is active, positive, constructive. 

Our subject presses home to us because the 
prevailing attitude toward the problems of 
destiny is that of doubt rather than that 
of questioning, and the result is religious indif- 
ference. 

There have come down to us certain beliefs 
from our fathers; beliefs that were the result of 
much thought and of deep experience; beliefs 
whose meaning no words can carry and yet words 
furnish almost the only vehicle of transportation, 
and so these beliefs have come down to us in 
words. 

The impulse of a headlong generation is to 
avoid an investigation into these beliefs which 
words so poorly express. The tendency is to 
avoid questioning the doctrines and simply to 
doubt them. 



Doubt, a Shrinking Back 169 



The doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, is in 
point. It is quickly simplified to an arithmetical 
equation, three equals one, which, of course, is 
absurd. I doubt the doctrine of the Trinity, is 
the easy verdict. 

But those religious fathers of ours were not 
absurd. They knew as well as any one that three 
does not equal one. 

They were questioners who could look at 
reality from more than one standpoint at a time. 

Whoever is willing to come to the doctrine of 
the Trinity, constructively, will find the path 
leading away from one-sided dogmatism and 
opening up to faith in the reconciliation of the 
primary contradiction of experience, which I take 
to be the antinomy of the one and the many. 

As another illustration may be taken the doc- 
trine of the divinity of Christ. The doubting 
mind is quite satisfied to say : A pagan inheritance, 
a bit of mythology, an old- wives' fable; I doubt 
the doctrine. 

But those fathers of ours were not so simple as 
some are inclined to think. They looked far and 
thought long, and whoever is willing to question 
into their meaning, instead of straightway doubt- 
ing their sanity, will be surprised to find in 
this doctrine of the divinity of Christ entrance 
to all the hope of the good of life and entrance 



170 The Unexplored Self 

to all the hope of personal participation in that 
good. 



The current attitude toward these two doc- 
trines will serve to make clear the difference 
between an attitude of shrinking back and of 
pressing on. 

The latter propels the wheel of truth while the 
former impedes its turning. 

Of course, it will happen once in a while that 
such impeding, which is in the nature of a brake, 
will keep the wheel from advancing into error. 
Doubt will, once in a while, keep the wheel from 
going into falsehood, but in general it blocks life, 
while questions advance it. 

The meaning of life is like a garden of fruits and 
flowers, separated from us by a difficult wall. 
We may walk along the wall and despair of our 
ability to reach the good things; or else we may, 
perhaps with toil and labor, surmount the wall. 

The attitude of doubt will hold a man without 
the garden where is the tree of life and the tree of 
knowledge. It is the faith-born seeking, the 
asking, the knocking, which wins an opening. 



But this illustration of the garden and the 
intervening wall is not altogether adequate, for it 



Doubt, a Shrinking Back 171 

is not merely a case of doubt's keeping one back 
from truth. 

He that doubteth is like the surge of the sea, 
driven by the wind and tossed. The shrinking 
back as regards the great issues, results in a man's 
being swept along by the current of life to become 
the driftwood of the little issues, of fitful passions 
and whims. 

It is not given even to a doubting mind to stand 
still, because while the mind is busy holding to its 
doubt of the great principles, it is unconsciously 
forming opinions on a thousand and one other 
things, or rather opinions are fastening upon it, 
with the result that, while the man makes no 
progress in determining the value of his life, he is 
being possessed of obstinate views in respect to 
trivial and more secondary things which acceler- 
ate the waste of his soul. 

A doubting mind may think itself merely to be 
halting between two particular opinions, but all 
the time the surrounding influences are having 
their effect, until he who doubted the big truths 
because such truths are to be won only by sus- 
tained effort is nevertheless a thorough dogmatist 
with a bony shell of opinions and beliefs which are 
the result, not of his choice and investigation, but 
of chance and circumstance. 

The very habits of inertia which are developed 
when the attitude of doubt is preferred to that of 
questioning make the man oftentimes the puppet 



172 The Unexplored Self 

of strange and fantastical superstitions. I have 
known people who were doubters of Christi- 
anity to become neophytes of necromancy and 
occultism. 

I have known people who were doubters in 
ethics and as to the value of life to develop into 
zealots of pessimism. 

I have known people who doubted the suprem- 
acy of love to become confident of the suprem- 
acy of selfishness. 



There are some natures that seem born to lop. 
The stalk of the plant is too weak for its burden 
and the top drags on whichever side it may have 
chanced to tip over. In its distress such a 
plant appeals to the gardener and very care- 
fully and delicately he untangles the dingers 
that have caught on the weeds and he puts in 
a support. 

He watches it till he thinks that the tendrils 
have caught the new support. Then duty calls 
attention away and the first thing he knows there 
is another cry of distress and the plant has lopped 
over in the opposite direction and is dragging in 
the dust. 

Some people are bedraggled here and there, for a 
few years in atheism, then in scepticism, then in 
spiritualism, then in hardened revolt, then in 
lachrymose discontent. 



Doubt, a Shrinking Back 173 

Attention is called to such cases not to ridicule 
them, but as warnings to those in whom the 
temperament is not necessarily chronic. We 
may sympathize with doubters, but they are 
not to be condoned, least of all admired. 

Through a confusion which we are trying to 
overcome, an unfortunate glamour has gathered 
around the word doubt. It is not true for a 
moment that there is more faith in honest doubt 
than in half the creeds, as the poet said. If the 
poet meant honest questioning we accept his 
aphorism, but doubt is the refuge of either selfish 
or anemic temperaments who are unwilling to 
struggle through to a larger view of our life, its 
hopes and its prospects. 

I find that many of the modern cults are 
attractive to those who are temperamental 
doubters so far as intellect goes, but who are easily 
impressed by environment. The devotees of 
such cults are quite likely to be under the influence 
of the personality of some teacher and not of his 
teaching. It is he whom they follow rather than 
his reasoning. If they are for a time out of his 
influence they lose interest and hasten to take 
lessons again. 



How then is doubt to be overcome? Not by 
presentation of arguments. 

Arguments do little for a religion. If a man is 



174 The Unexplored Self 

a questioner he will pick up arguments without 
dependence upon forms that have appealed to 
others. 

The doubter needs not mental suasion but 
mental energy and initiative. 

This initiative can often be aroused by arguing 
in behalf of atheism and irresponsibility and so 
leading the man to doubt atheism and irrespon- 
sibility. 

It can be aroused by stimulating activity, 
enlarging the experience, and thus laying the 
ground for the acceptance of the eternal worths. 
Set the victim of windy suspirations to doing 
something. Get him interested in something 
that grows. 

It can be aroused most effectively of all by 
bringing an example of one who has believed in 
life and believed in the worth of effort. This is 
the method of the writer of the nth chapter of 
Hebrews, perhaps the most convincing exposition 
of faith that has ever been given. It is the method 
of Christianity. 

The process in every case where a mind has 
overcome scepticism has been to find some core, 
some kernel, some nucleus of reality, and ques- 
tioning from thence, the great truths have been 
found linking themselves into an enlarging net- 
work of reality. The starting points may be 
wondrously divergent; the final agreement is 
wondrously harmonious. 



Doubt, a Shrinking Back 175 

Doubt then is built on unfaith and results in 
waste of the soul. Questions are built on faith 
and result in gain of the soul. Let a man believe 
something and keep harking back to that and he 
will find a goal and the way to the goal becoming 
clearer day by day. 



CHAPTER XVII 

FAITH AN APPRIZAL 



THE preceding chapter considered doubt as a 
shrinking back to the depreciation of the 
soul. In this chapter we take up the positive 
content of faith. 

The many words with many meanings which 
claim to define faith make the subject an 
intricate one, an almost hopeless tangle, and 
if our interest were merely a lexicographer's 
in behalf of precise definition, there would 
be small excuse for discussing the matter 
here. 

But in the New Testament faith appears as the 
key to Christianity. It has been the watchword 
of Christendom. The hymns sing its praise. 
The creeds affirm it and volumes have been writ- 
ten to validate the idea. 

The great religious leaders are saying that this 
day and generation needs above all things the 
tonic of faith. Some of its devotees expect it to 
supersede therapeutics. 

176 



Faith an Apprizal 177 

It is either a valuable asset or a dangerous South 
Sea Bubble. 

If faith is as wonderful a property as some 
claim, it should be a market leader at a tremendous 
premium among the world's goods. A power that 
will take up a mountain and cast it into the sea 
could be made very useful in construction work. 
A means of knowledge which obviates the tor- 
tuous processes of learning would have consider- 
able pedagogic value. An instrument for peering 
into the spirit world where the departed dwell and 
where is the real direction of mundane affairs 
would be a welcome addition to our instruments 
of discovery. 

In regard to faith many and many a man has 
seriously asked whether the whole thing were a 
hoax, or whether there was some reality back of 
such extravagant claims. 

Conservative business houses are inclined to 
regard with suspicion wild-cat, get-power-quick, 
get-knowledge-quick propositions. A widely 
tooted gold mine about which nothing definite 
can be ascertained does not win much attention 
from established firms. This is one reason, per- 
haps, why faith is quoted so much below par in 
some circles. Curb traders may deal in an 
entirely speculative and vague thing called faith 
which, even if it has a respectable ancient history, 
can present no modern recommendation by an 
expert. The committee vote against listing it on 



178 The Unexplored Self 

the exchange is heavy. The reputable houses are 
disinclined to handle it. They have more reliable 
investments to offer their clients. 

Yet, notwithstanding all these adverse es- 
timates, faith has retained an integrity of its 
own, a validity of its own. Whoever has felt 
religion as an active force in his own life has 
recognized an element more than belief, some- 
thing more than knowledge, a factor which was 
not opposed to reasoning, but which reasoning 
could not supply. So that there have always 
been investors eager to examine into this propo- 
sition called faith. Its claims have been urged 
and contested and there is a considerable mass of 
opinion that has to be considered. 



Out of all the discussion which the attempt to 
express what is meant by faith has called forth, 
one fact is becoming more and more clear, namely, 
that faith is distinctive because it is an apprizal. 

To have faith in a thing, to believe in a thing 
is to feel or appreciate its value, to think it good 
for something. 

At this point we must be pedantic enough to 
call to mind a distinction between belief and 
belief in. Confusion here has often confused 
the whole subject. Then the confusion has 
been worse confounded when some usage in 
the last two hundred years has come to employ 



Faith an Apprizal 179 

believe in, in the sense of accepting the existence 
of, as, for instance, when a man says he believes 
"in" sea serpents. 

The word faith, which is the equivalent of the 
original believing in, must be carefully distin- 
guished from believing that. It has better pre- 
served the historical distinction of believing in a 
thing. 

To have faith in a medicine is more than con- 
viction about its manufacture, it is to be con- 
vinced of the efficacy of the medicine. To have 
faith in universal suffrage is different from assent 
to its ancient prevalence ; it is to realize its benefit 
to society. To have faith in a general or a leader 
is to accept his ability in leadership. 

To have faith in a doctrine is more than accept- 
ing its truth; geometrical propositions are true; 
it is to feel its beneficial power. To have faith in 
Christ is more than believing certain things about 
him; it is to appreciate him as the saviour of 
society. 

The word faith, therefore, has a definite mean- 
ing and a definite use. It is not another means 
of knowledge which differs from ordinary know- 
ledge. It is not defined by denial alone. There is 
in the word something clear and positive, some- 
thing that has a legitimate place in the world's 
experience and a place among the most precious 
of the world's goods. 

It has a legitimate place and yet it is quite 



180 The Unexplored Self 

distinct from the mere existential assertion. To 
believe that a thing exists is very different from 
faith in a thing. With the latter there is an 
appropriation, a warming of the heart, a reaching 
out of the desire. 

The way to accomplish anything is by first of 
all having faith in it. Let a man feel the im- 
portance sufficiently, let him see the profit to be 
obtained, and almost any obstacle may be over- 
come. Faith provides the incentive, and those 
who are looking for the best gain are doing the 
world's work; they are faith led. 



It is here that so many stop short in their 
religious lives. No one should confuse his ac- 
ceptance of the being of God with faith in God. 
The latter is a sense of the significance of God 
to his life and wraps a man up in his Father's 
business. 

The teaching of theology has been largely 
without religious influence because it has been 
satisfied with establishing the existence of deity. 
Whether convinced by the argument or not, men 
have equally remained indifferent. 

The teaching of Christian dogmatics has re- 
mained without much religious influence because 
it has put its principal energies into establishing 
certain events in the life of Christ or facts about 
Christ and men have recited the creeds glibly 



Faith an Apprizal 181 

enough without real faith, for faith in Christ is a 
passion comparable to the frenzy aroused by the 
discovery of gold. 

Modern scientific study of the Bible has been 
comparatively without religious influence because 
it has been so occupied with information in regard 
to authorship and chronology. 

This is not to decry research. Theology, 
dogmatics, and criticism have their place, but in so 
far as they have not uncovered precious veins of 
metal they have had as little to do with religion as 
has a book of algebra. 

Books on social economy or books of biography 
are more religious than the ordinary treatises on 
natural theology because they deal with better- 
ments and preferences. The God of natural 
theology is a philosophic conception rather 
than religious, because its conceptions are not 
drawn from the realization of the significance 
of life and the significance of the human indi- 
vidual. 

The Bible is the Scripture of humanity, 
not because it contains information and truth, 
but because it is shot through and through 
with the idea that life has a meaning. The 
entire volume is a development of the first 
chapter which said of life, it was good, it was 
good, it was very good. Little insignificant 
episodes in Bible history are related to eternal 
purposes. 



1 82 The Unexplored Self 



Religion is different from science because its 
primary object is to grade things precious, and 
faith is different from knowledge because it is 
a prizing. 

The very desires and regrets, therefore, in 
respect to the passing of beliefs, will be a basis for 
attempting a new construction, the old faith in 
new relations, a new expression for the good — the 
good that remains although the previous forms 
were invalid. 

We are learning that the pleasure-pain experi- 
ence precedes rather than follows the verbal 
formulation of the experience, and when one 
formula proves faulty, a better one is made. It 
is the old scholastic doctrine that faith precedes 
belief. 

Faith is not believing something which a man 
knows is not so. It is not believing against 
reason. It is not belief in spite of reason. To 
speak of faith as knowledge by the heart, or as 
revealed knowledge, or as an inner experience, 
introduces more confusion than illumination. 

Men have said that faith is a sense of depend- 
ence, a mental attitude, an act of the will, an act 
of obedience. These have come nearer to the 
nucleus of intention for which the word stands. 
This nucleus is an apprizal, a sense of the good of 
life which leads to the gain of the soul. 



Faith an Apprizal 183 

The worth of life can be proven no more than 
can the sweetness of sugar. The joy of Christian 
effort can be proven no more than can the fra- 
grance of a violet, but it can be felt and appre- 
ciated and this is important. This is evangelism. 
This is the way of salvation. Through faith 
have the heroes of old and of to-day done their 
work. 



For those who have accepted the teachings of 
the Church or of their parents with unquestioning 
simplicity; for those who regard doubt merely as 
a mental teething which will pass with adolescence ; 
for those who see no crying evils in life ; for those 
who expect logic and legislation, or else fate to 
drag in the Golden Age, this establishing of faith 
signifies little. 

Those, however, whose whole framework has 
been wrenched as the supports for the larger hope 
have been one by one removed, those who have 
writhed under the iron grip of temptation with no 
succor from religious considerations, those who 
have seen loved ones led away to indulgence and 
selfishness with no power of intervening the 
thoughts of superior obligation, those who, looking 
out upon irreligion, sympathize with the alarm 
at human heedlessness, — these all know how much 
it will mean if faith as a desire for the best things 
be based in an effective and appealing way. 



1 84 The Unexplored Self 

For it is not as though society were well stocked 
with high grade properties among which faith 
came in as an additional asset. The actual con- 
dition is much more like a time of panic when 
property after property fails to make good and 
men turn to faith feeling that if that fails then 
they are bankrupt indeed. 

As regards goods that are really and per- 
manently stable, we are in rather desperate 
straits. The investments which we have been 
bartering and exchanging turn out to be paper, 
either good for a day or else depending upon that 
which faith represents. 

What I mean is that wealth, success, friend- 
ships, virtues, are but promissory, needing to be 
endorsed by something more solid than this stock 
exchange we call earth. 

Banking houses may continue to advertise the 
staple issues, but society is beginning to feel that 
the security back of the moral bonds and ethical 
stocks must be investigated and assured. 



There is toward Christian faith more than the 
interest in a particular thing said to be precious. 
The titles to no properties have any permanency 
unless its guarantees can be obtained, and all 
securities depend on the validity of its indorse- 
ments. 

Faith furnishes the incentive which makes the 



Faith an Apprizal 185 

possible actual. It awakens the will which makes 
knowledge effectual. It supplies the certification 
of earth's pledges. 

While, on the one hand, discredit is being 
thrown upon effort and upon morality, and while 
contempt of life finds freer and freer vent and 
men are at a loss for arguments to oppose to 
suicide, faith, on the other hand, sets up the 
standard of goods ; it insists upon a recognition of 
the benefit of Christ, the benefit of the Bible, the 
vital significance of God, the good of life. It is 
content with nothing less and thus accomplishes 
the gain of the soul. 

In our creeds, accordingly, the Apostles' Creed, 
for instance, are contained two distinct elements: 
first, an appreciation of the value of God, or of 
Jesus the Messiah, or of the Holy Spirit; second, 
descriptions which are useful for identification, 
but not necessarily a vital part of the faith. 
Just as if a political platform might affirm belief 
in free trade, and add: "A doctrine first pro- 
mulgated by Adam Smith"; my disagreement 
with the historical accuracy of the description is 
secondary to my acceptance of that plank. 

The primary thing in any creed or in Christian- 
ity is the things it has faith in, the things it 
prizes. These change character and these mould 
society. 

When love is recognized as the supreme good 
it becomes evident why the two ideas of love and 



1 86 The Unexplored Self 

faith are so closely allied and are used inter- 
changeably as the mainspring of Christianity. 
To love is to prize, to feel the value of, and faith is 
an apprizal. 

This thought leads over very naturally to the 
part which the things a man prizes play in his self- 
development. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE TREASURE AND THE SELF 



WHAT the eyes see is determined by the 
interests. 
There is a well-known rhyme of a pussy cat who 
had been to London to see the queen, the net 
result of whose observations was a mouse under 
the regal throne. 

The story is no Mother Goose nonsense. It is 
a philosophy in a nutshell. 

In travelling through a country every person has 
a different landscape presented to him. A civil 
engineer will notice topographical features. A 
farmer will see crops and soil. An artist will note 
colors and contours. A geologist will observe 
strata and rock formations. A psychologist will 
inventory his own and others' mental attitudes. 
The literary man will be impressed by events and 
occurrences. 

I shall never forget the real anger with which 
a lady related to me the fact that during their 

187 



1 88 The Unexplored Self 

trip up and down the Bosphorus, a group of 
young people devoted their entire attention to a 
game of shuffle-board which they were playing 
upon the deck. It made her almost furious to 
think that so unique an opportunity should be let 
slip. They might have seen palaces and castles 
but they saw only blocks of wood shuffling into 
chalked squares. 

It would probably surprise all tourists if they 
could know what was actually in the minds of 
their fellows as a party of them are being person- 
ally conducted through a gallery or through some 
ruins. The tourist's interest determines that 
which his eyes shall see. Whether he is playing 
shuffle-board or for the sake of conformity fixes 
his gaze on the passing shores, what he sees in the 
two cases is not very different. 



There are some who are attempting to build 
upon this fact a philosophical system. They 
say that our knowledge of things has been con- 
trolled by their value to us and that this world 
which seems so independent is nevertheless the 
product of our own and our ancestors' interests. 
Things of value have been kept and made per- 
manent; things of no value have for generations 
dropped away and so have no effect on our minds. 

For instance, some animals, because of its 
value to them, have an almost miraculous sense 



The Treasure and the Self 189 

of smell and therefore have a real world which is 
unknown to us. 

The theory presents much that is pertinent and 
valid, but our excursion into the realm of phi- 
losophy and speculation will be postponed till the 
next chapter. Our present purpose is much 
more simple and practical. 

Our subject, The Treasure and the Self, would 
say that a man is summed up, defined, in the 
things he considers precious. 

Develop a man's preferences if you would make 
him more religious. Let one look to his interests 
if he would know which way he is growing. Let 
him put his treasure in the direction in which he 
would have his personality go. 

A man's character is discovered and determined 
not by his clothes nor his creed, not by his pro- 
fession nor his professions, not by his labor nor his 
deeds, but by his likings. Tell me what a man 
likes and then I know what the man is. 

There is indeed no other test of character and 
the test of likings is an unfailing one. It totals 
the man of him. The other elements do not 
reach the actual personality. 



What a man knows reveals, either the retentive- 
ness of his memory, or the range of his mental 
journeys. Although even here, as was hinted, 



190 The Unexplored Self 

what a man likes largely determines what he 
knows. 

A man's ability to talk reveals a close cor- 
relation between his tongue and his brain. Some 
have facility in writing. Some have physical 
health. Some are well provided with animal 
energy. But these are imperfect indications of 
the man himself. If increase of volubility, culti- 
vation of the fancy, erudition, travel, make a 
man's interests expand, then only does the self 
expand. 

A man's learning, what boots it? A man's 
reading, what boots it? A man's experience, 
what boots it? But dig down to the apprecia- 
tions and you have penetrated to the soul. 

"If I have the gift of prophecy and know all 
mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all 
faith so as to remove mountains, but have not 
love, I am nothing." This is not an extrava- 
gant statement. It touches the deepest core of 
actuality. 

It is a man's consciousness, his experience, his 
love that keeps him from dissolution into earth. 
It is in his liking and his love that a man is 
farthest removed from a machine and becomes a 
person. 

One man opens a newspaper first to the court 
calendar because he is by profession a lawyer, 
but if you find him lingering longest over the 
society columns you are able to understand his 



The Treasure and the Self 191 

more essential character. Another person may 
first glance through the real estate transactions 
because he is a land broker, but if you find him 
poring over the art notes and the exhibitions of 
paintings you have gained an insight into his 
inner self. 

The word heart is sometimes used to stand for 
the essential self as distinguished from the body 
and the brain. These latter are more related to 
the external world. The heart as used in the 
Bible stands for the distinct person, for the inner 
man, for the very man of very man, and would 
you know of this inner self where it is, look to the 
choices, "for where the treasure is there will the 
heart be also." 

All the rest of his being follows along the 
direction which his heart has taken. As the slow 
sea creatures wrap themselves about a stray bit 
of food; as the eagles gather about the carcass; 
as the swarm follows the queen bee ; as the plant 
sends it fullest life to meet the light, so a man's 
entire being, his thoughts, his ideas, his dreams, 
his associations, his reading, his conversation, his 
actions, cluster about his treasury,. 



One thought that comes from the subject is 
no longer new to teachers, though none perhaps 
realize its full significance. This is the part that 
interest plays in education. 



192 The Unexplored Self 

Education without interest is an impossibility. 
With interest education is unavoidable. 

One needs no academic walls. He needs no 
trained tutors. If he is interested in a subject, 
education will come unsought, will be possessed 
unpursued. 

An interest acts as a magnet to catch and to 
hold bits of information that would otherwise 
slip away. Without any appreciable effort, the 
treasure becomes a coral insect and builds around 
itself an island in the ocean currents. 

A man who begins to put up money on horse 
races soon develops a familiarity with the race- 
track gossip, with names, with past performances, 
and with the mathematics of chance, which the 
mere desire for information could not have stirred 
him to. 

One who has a relative in politics uncon- 
sciously assimilates the stray items about the 
political situation until he or she is quite thor- 
oughly informed. 

People say : I wish I had had opportunities to 
study. They regret their lack of a college educa- 
tion. The lack can be supplied and abundantly 
supplied if the wish is more than a passing whim, 
or the regret more than a fleeting shadow. Let a 
man cultivate the likings and the mind will 
follow. 

Let him invest in a Venezuelan bond and the 
acquiring of knowledge about South American 



The Treasure and the Self 193 

affairs will be no task. Let him develop an ail- 
ment and he will become a physician. 

It is through being mastered by a subject that 
one learns to master it and this being over- 
mastered by a subject is the same as being im- 
pressed by its value. Let the value of some 
investigation be established and there will soon 
be a new science. The value goes first and truth 
comes along in its wake. 



Far be it from any one to join in treason against 
Truth. Truth is by divine right queen and des- 
pot, sole lawgiver and judge. 

Whoso says he is swayed by other citizenship 
is at once ostracized, outlawed, banished from 
human relationship. And this is as it should be. 

Truth has travelled along so bloody a path in 
reaching her throne that she dare not brook even 
the whisper of any other sovereignty. Rather 
than run the risk of sedition and revolution, the 
slightest suspicion of disloyalty or of transfer of 
allegiance is summarily stamped out. 

In this almost fierce sentiment the Christian 
Church cordially joins. It submits to the mental 
arbiter in every instance. Against the dictates of 
Truth, preferences must not be weighed for a 
moment. Truth reigns alone and all her sub- 
jects rejoice. Not for all the gain in the world 
should any one deviate a hair's breadth from her 
13 



194 The Unexplored Self 

prescriptions. Any advantage obtained against 
her permission is actual loss. She is sole and 
eternal. Even idolatrous worship of her is to be 
condoned. 

Yet all this is because we have at heart the good 
in existence and the good of humanity. The 
preciousness of Truth is above Truth itself. 

Truth has established her right to rule, but she 
has had to establish it. Were Truth less precious 
than fancy, allegiance would be transferred. If 
this be treason there is nothing to do but make 
the best of it. 

By itself Truth is an abstraction, while things 
felt and treasured in experience are the real things. 
God is discovered in the attractiveness of nature 
and in the good of life, not in its mathematics. 
The final reality is the one we feel and not the 
formulae which result from analysis. But here 
we are in the domain of philosophy, and ours 
was to be an excursion into the realm of the 
practical. 



A practical application comes to those who are 
interested in the extension of Christianity. It is 
Christianity as a world's asset which is to be put 
in the forefront and is to distinguish it as a religion 
to inspire life, from a chain of syllogisms to satisfy 
the mind. 

One truth is as true as any other, but truths 



The Treasure and the Self 195 

may be ranked according to their value. Religion 
emphasizes the most valuable truths. 

Christianity will prevail and draw hearts as its 
life-giving qualities are established, as it brings to 
light the great mineral veins of wealth in existence. 

Another practical application comes to those 
who are in search of a religion, and who from the 
standpoint of mere truth cannot see the advan- 
tage of Christianity over Buddhism, or Theoso- 
phy, or science. In a philosophical Parliament 
of Religions, Christianity would be one among 
many. It stands unique, however, because it has 
revealed the most precious things of life. It 
reaches the best in things. 

It affirms not only the good of honesty and 
truth and character, but also the good of doing, 
the good of individual living, and love as 
elemental. Its good tidings {eu-angeliori) gives 
it its eminence. 



A practical application comes to those who are 
going along in life with no strength to rise into 
the higher ranges, who recognize that their aims 
are rather low, but do not know how to ennoble 
them. Let them take a more comprehensive view 
of the goods of the world so as to distinguish the 
perishable from the imperishable goods, the 
treasures which moth and rust consume, which 



196 The Unexplored Self 

thieves having broken through may steal, from 
those heavenly treasures which neither moth nor 
rust consume and to which thieves cannot break 
through to steal. 

Christ's meaning appears still more plain when 
men realize, as they are coming to, that the word 
heaven meant for him the larger life which may 
begin for any one even here on earth. Let men 
see the more heavenly, the more eternal proper- 
ties among the earthly things and their hearts will 
already begin to inhabit this heavenly kingdom. 

In one place Paul says: The love of Christ 
constraineth us. Love constrains; love draws; 
love compels. 

It is the love of Christ that has constrained and 
drawn the heart of the world to reach out toward 
him. As men have felt and appreciated that 
spirit, society has been directed and transformed. 
It is the affections and desires that stimulate to 
activity. It is the treasure that leads forth the 
heart. 

Some hearts are enclosed by the walls of an 
office, or by the boundaries of a farm. Others are 
beginning to look beyond these things and are 
finding new treasures in purses that wax not old. 
They are learning to estimate things in terms of 
heavenly treasure that faileth not. 

The treasure determines the direction and 
amount of the growth ; for where your treasure is 
there will your self be also. 



CHAPTER XIX 

RELIGION THE GRADING OF THINGS PRECIOUS 



SCIENCE has been well and entirely summed 
up in the definition that it is systematized 
knowledge. The benefit of patient research to 
this end is evidenced by every factor in modern 
life. 

One reason for the failure to understand the 
importance and the place of religion in modern 
life is because men have not understood what 
religion is. It has been confused with liturgies, 
with metaphysics, with superstition, and such 
like. Religion is something tangible and distinct. 
It is more practical than even science and comes 
nearer home to the individual. 

Religion may be well and entirely summed up 
in the definition that it is the systematizing of 
values; it is the grading of things precious. 

The novice grasps the nearest pleasure. 
Experience teaches that some pleasures are better 
let pass for others. Some things turn out to be 

197 



198 The Unexplored Self 

worth great pains. All this is in the direction of 
grading values. It is the threshold of religion. 

Religion comes when a man has looked over the 
good and bad things of life and made a system of 
them. 

His system may be based on superstition; the 
good- will of a fetish may be put on top ; mytho- 
logy may be its framework. Or else there may 
be nothing in it but a calm balancing of sensa- 
tions ; there is a religion of commercialism and one 
of socialism. The essential difference in religions 
always depends on what is regarded as the highest 
and the higher goods. Varieties in the frame- 
work and speculation are important only as they 
contribute to the gradation. 

Confucianism makes orderliness best and grades 
everything up to that. Buddhism says passivity 
is best and keys everything to that. Moham- 
medanism used to say, at least, that a paradise of 
houris was best and subordinated effort to that. 

Every man is out for the good things of life. 
It is worth his while to make a system of them and 
to try for the better and for the best things. 

Amusements are good, but it is better still to 
have the price of an overcoat in winter. Fashion- 
able clothes are attractive, but it is better still to 
pay one's debts. Office-holding is said to be 
enjoyable, but there are those whose religion tells 
them that to be right is better than to hold office. 

It is a natural progress from such practical 



Religion the Grading of Values 199 

conclusions to a science of ethics where recom- 
mendable choices are set forth in more or less 
order. Now when ethics is required to exhibit 
the final good and the reasons for the supremacy 
of that good, when, for instance, it is asked, why 
one should seek the greatest good of the greatest 
number, and when there is an attempt to arouse 
in men's minds an appreciation of that supreme 
good, ethics passes over into religion. 



This understanding of religion lets us see a little 
better why it is entirely distinct from descrip- 
tions and deductions. 

We know that in order really to impart the 
meaning of the word precious, it is necessary, 
finally, to actualize some experience; say one 
where a group of miners are laughing-happy over 
a newly found diamond ; or one where a father and 
mother, standing over a wasted form, find hand 
seeking hand in an ecstasy of delight because the 
little life will be spared to them. 

Precious finds itself in the sparkle of a rare 
jewel or when beatified in the grip of affection. 
That which the word stands for is at the same 
time qualitative and personal. There is present 
the palpitation of gladness, the eagerness of desire, 
the soothing of assurance. 

If the word precious receives its final justifica- 
tion only in experience, much more so does any 



200 The Unexplored Self 

grading of things precious. The individual liking 
is the final arbiter for the ranking of preferences. 

This is the truth in the dictum: de gustibus non 
disputandum. The dictum does not mean that 
there can be no agreement in the ranking of likes ; 
it means that the final decision must be arbitrary. 
After all the facts are in, and other influences 
are out, one experience is more precious than 
another because it is preferred and for no other 
reason. This is the individualism of religion, 
its independence. 

Another element involved in our definition is 
that religion will emphasize and validate precious 
things that otherwise might not be appreciated. 
This churchly aspect will be taken up in a later 
chapter. 

Our present interest is in the fact that religion 
has a separate and important field of its own. 

Religion is distinct both in its method and in its 
content. Taking into consideration the very 
deepest desires, it deals with preferences too 
subjective to be deduced, as yet, from other ex- 
periences; and likewise its final decision as to 
the highest good will be determined not primarily 
by reasoning but by actual experience. 

It is in the interest of the systematizing of 
knowledge that we distinguish religion and 
science. It is in the interest of science that 
preferences be as far removed as possible; they 



Religion the Grading of Values 201 

would be a disturbing element in an ordering of 
objective relations. Religion and academic calm 
are incompatible. 



Our discussion indicates two aspects of reality 
which co-operate to produce reality and are 
co-ordinate elements in it. These are the rela- 
tional and the affective aspects of every experi- 
ence. 

Either aspect by itself is an abstraction and yet 
the one or the other may be made the centre of 
attention. Either one may put us on the track 
of reality but by itself is not the full equivalent 
of reality. 

In this distinction which we have just made, 
a value recognition (sensation, feeling, emotion, 
worth) is one phase of every experience, while the 
other phase is a recognition of relations. 

If I have a stinging sensation in my arm I may 
consider the position of the bruise and go back to 
some half -forgotten blow, or I may respond merely 
to the intensity of the pain. In the former case 
it would be more the relational aspect that would 
be emphasized, in the latter case the pleasure- 
pain aspect. 

When the relational pointings are certain 
enough we may accept the reality and not demand 
the sensing of the thing. When the sensation is 



202 The Unexplored Self 

dependable enough we may accept the reality and 
waive the inability to find the relations. 

This is not to say that there are judgments of 
worth which are distinct from judgments of fact. 
There is no world of worth in distinction from a 
world of truth, but the analysis of any or of all 
experience discloses the two functional variables, 
value and relation. 



I have regretted the preceding technical dis- 
cussion, but navigators who are familiar with 
these waters will be aware that we have been 
sailing among rocks. The partizans of infallibility 
resent the intrusion of preferences into the domain 
of discussion. If they see the word value empha- 
sized they say " Pragmatism' ' or "Ritschlianism" 
and are quick to dismiss the matter with scant 
courtesy. 

One needs no epistemological analysis to 
understand Christianity, and he who has been 
unable to obtain much light from the preceding 
paragraphs has suffered no severe loss. The only 
object has been to obtain the right to say what 
is rather obvious, namely, that there is a dif- 
ference between sensing the value of a thing on the 
one hand, and on the other hand, seeing the net- 
work of relations in which it is — a difference 
between grading values directly and classifying 
them by objective standards. 



Religion the Grading of Values 203 

To the former is indispensable the warmth of 
immediacy. The latter, the scientific attitude, is 
more successful when there is no personal interest ; 
for science, one truth is as valid as any other. 

It seems necessary to remind the scientist that 
life is not here merely some time to be inter- 
related for facility of comprehension. It is all 
the time being lived. 

In a system of necessary truths it is more 
important that m to the zero power equals one, 
than that the sun's rays feel warm, because the 
latter is less deducibly known. Nevertheless 
for living beings the comfort of the sun's warmth 
is far and away of greater significance. 

Enough has been said to satisfy even a rabid 
deductionist that in life as we find ourselves living 
it every day, there is a call for a ranking or a 
grading of things precious — a grading that can- 
not be fixed by objective standards. Experience 
runs far ahead of any success in reaching objective 
standards, especially in the less material regions 
of experience. 

This does not mean a cry of: Hands off! to 
reasoning. There is no opposition between the 
strictest reasoning and religion. We are trying at 
the present moment to reason. The point is that 
reasoning cannot originate the value and plays 
only an auxiliary part in the ultimate grading. 

As to the sweetness of sugar, for instance, the 



204 The Unexplored Self 

logical argument from the nature of carbon, 
oxygen, and hydrogen would be unhesitatingly 
against it. The appeal to a trial is what carries 
conviction. And in somewhat the same way the 
final appeal as to the worth of effort is not to 
argument, nor to those who look on from the 
outside. The appeal is to those who are in 
abundant life, and theories must be brought into 
line with their report. Even the pessimist in 
despising his present existence shows a perception 
of better things and that perception of his is the 
product of actuality. 

So he who has loved and been loved, knows 
affection to be in some way an integral part of 
experience and therefore woven into the warp and 
woof of reality. 

There is an assurance of reality that comes 
from preciousness as well as that which comes 
from inferences, and the former has been perhaps 
more provocative of discoveries than the latter. 



Religion, then, is not a code of deductions but a 
systematizing of men's inevitable grading of goods 
with a consequent arousing to the best goods. 
The beginnings of such a grading each one in- 
stinctively and naturally makes for himself and 
wherever the system is sufficient to give direction 
to life's conduct there is a religion. 

Every one who continues to live is compelled to 



Religion the Grading of Values 205 

make choices, but religion has a meaning only to 
those who are eager for the more precious things. 
It is entirely scientific, therefore, to say, for 
instance, that only he who is living a life of love 
can appreciate its validity and supremacy, while 
it is unscientific for life's self-centred men to 
deny the Gospel's significance. Mere contempla- 
tion of life leads to the nothing-matters verdict. 
One who plunges into the purposeful activities of 
society finds the sense of a final purpose coming 
as a matter of course. 

When heaven is understood as the summation 
of the love in life and of the purpose of life, the 
meaning of the phrase, treasures in heaven, used 
in our last chapter, becomes clearer. Such trea- 
sures regulate the currency used in business, in 
society, and by individuals. They affect not only 
the property and the clothes but also the soul. 
They affect not only the friends but the very 
source and fountain of friendship. 

All the intensity of speculative excitement and 
the patience of the long lines which await their 
turns at the pay windows cannot attain the 
emotions which properly belong to the thoughts 
of religion. Paper money is little precious without 
the guarantee of a solvent bank or state; and all 
the precious things of this world, the silver and the 
gold, the jewels and the bonds, yes, the kindliness 
and the heroism, are paper money whose values are 
drawn from the final value or the kingdom of God. 



206 The Unexplored Self 

Without the backing from something higher, 
effort is vanity. Without a divine bearing, the 
social ties end in tragic bankruptcy. Paper money 
is not worthless; this world is not at all to be 
despised ; but its validity is found in the endorse- 
ment that leads above purposelessness. That 
endorsement validates the entire system. 



6 



Christianity becomes, therefore, not primarily 
a matter of scholarly research and examina- 
tion. It is not to be taken down occasionally 
from the museum shelves like other specimens. 
It is to be consulted daily as regulating the 
entire rise and fall of prices. It enables one to 
quote all the commodities. There is no gulf 
between its high-priced securities and other 
values. 

Neighbor love is but another name for public 
spirit. The Kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom 
among kingdoms, a state among states. God's 
work is a business among businesses. The reign 
of love is a delight among delights. 

Christ spoke of Christianity as a pearl among 
pearls, as property among properties. He spoke 
of his realm as a vineyard among vineyards. He 
classified Christian character as wealth to be 
weighed over against wealth. He stated what 
men were to seek first; then other things would 
fall into place, would be added of themselves. 



Religion the Grading of Values 207 

We have been travelling over debated ground, 
ground where misunderstanding is easy, and, as 
was said in the previous chapter, there should be 
no whisper of treason against truth or against 
truth for truth's sake. 

The principal point we have been making is 
that a system of principles that are rigidly true, 
as, for instance a calculus, may be widely remote 
from religion ; while in defining religion as a grad- 
ing of things precious, we realize a distinct field 
and for each individual the most immediately 
important one. 

The precious things of life suggest the converse, 
the wickedness and wrong of life. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE REBORN SELF 



THE devil plays an attenuated r61e in Christian 
teaching. This is unfortunate from the 
standpoint of the picturesque; he made an inter- 
esting background to the humdrum of virtue. 
It is unfortunate from the standpoint of romance ; 
some of the reported encounters with him are 
good reading. It is unfortunate also from the 
standpoint of exhortation ; he was easily available 
as a sort of bugaboo with which some mothers 
obtain obedience. 

It is simple for an enlightened generation to 
speak thus mockingly of the passing of Satan. 
Enlightenment, however, can ill afford to lose 
sight of the realities for which he stood. 

There is evil, plenty of evil; and it will be a 
fight to get rid of it, a continuous fight. One of 
the first things is to understand its nature. 

Evil is not eviscerated by being defined as mis- 
placed good and this sort of exaggerated definition 

208 



The Reborn Self 209 

is valuable to make it clear that there is no dualism 
in the universe. The flood that devastates a 
country obeys laws which under other circum- 
stances benefit the land. The bacilli which 
ravage a fair body are in themselves obeying the 
law of abundant life. The passion which pitches 
a man into a pig pen, if guided aright, could make 
him a master of events. Nor is suffering of itself 
evil. 

The final definition of evil involves the purpose 
of existence. It cannot be characterized with- 
out relation to the goal of events. Although that 
purpose and goal is so little known that men are in 
no position to be dogmatic, there is a revelation 
of its direction and a certainty of its adequacy; 
the purpose of life will be adequate to its wonder- 
ful intricacy and magnificence. 

So far as the action of men is concerned, con- 
duct which forwards the purpose of existence is 
good, is righteous, and conduct which thwarts it 
is evil, is unrighteous. 



Evil is a going astray, a fall, a collision, and 
only to a limited extent does it bring its own cure. 
For its extinction there must be conscious re- 
arrangement of conditions. 

One point which follows from this understand- 
ing of evil is, that the evil in life is not a necessity. 
It is not requisite for the perfection of good as 



210 The Unexplored Self 

some Theodicies would teach. Contact with vice 
is not necessary for the formation of good motives. 
Character is even better formed by contact with 
good than through the horror of evil. 

It follows further that only roughly may certain 
acts be cut out of the network of events and 
stamped evil. Although with a broadening inclu- 
sion the possibility grows less and less, there will 
always remain a possibility that any act which in 
most of its settings would be a wrong act, may 
under particular circumstances be a good act. 

The casuist, therefore, is able to cite many 
complications where deception might be good. 
Our refusal to tamper with the truth is not because 
we deny the accuracy of the casuist's reasoning, 
but because we believe that the few instances in 
which deception might be advantageous would 
not offset the tremendous evil if every man felt 
at liberty to figure things out before he decided 
to tell the truth. 

It follows also that the evil in life is not to be 
considered a penalty. Neither did this man sin 
nor his parents that he was born blind. Rains 
are sent upon the just and upon the unjust. The 
towers in Siloam fall on the virtuous as well as on 
the offenders. 

Civil laws make use of artificial evils, called 
punishments, to reinforce the deterrent effect of 
the natural evil which follows and determines the 
wrongness of wrong conduct. There is no evi- 



The Reborn Self 211 

dence that God uses or will use artificial suffering 
in addition to the suffering which naturally comes 
from wrong- doing. 

The most perhaps that can be said about divine 
retribution and divine rewards is that sometime 
we shall be tremendously glad if we have tried to 
do right and sometime we shall be tremendously 
sorry if we have done wrong. This allows a very 
effective doctrine of heaven and hell. 



An understanding of the nature of evil leads up 
to a consideration of the sense of sin, which, in 
turn, is closely connected with the subject of 
rebirth. The complaint is frequently made that 
the modern view of evil does not emphasize sin 
enough. 

It may be said in passing, that for overcom- 
ing wrong, the modern social view of wrong- 
doing is more effective than was the older 
emphasis on the sense of sin. In fact, the old- 
fashioned preaching made that sense less lasting 
than does the view of to-day, because the imme- 
diate sequel to the sense of sin was the sense of 
forgiveness and the convert at once entered a 
mood of peace and quiet. The misery in society 
that must be relieved was less realized than it is 
now. 

The peculiar value in the older preaching was 
not in its successful bettering of social conditions, 



212 The Unexplored Self 

but rather in the breaking down of pride and in 
effecting a direct and personal relation to God. 
This emotion was an exhilarating one. 

The thought of the forgiveness of sins is not 
to be spoken of slightingly; no man should be 
obliged to go on weighted down by the burden of 
the past ; but it is in place to urge that the sense 
of divine sonship produces an even more personal 
relation to God and is at the same time more con- 
structive. For a superficial nature interest in a 
father's work is less intense than relief from antici- 
pated punishment; for a deep nature it is more 
intense. 

In any case the rebirth is essential to an under- 
standing of Christianity. Our criticism has been 
in respect to its basing and in respect to the results 
of that basing. 

We said that the sense of sin is closely con- 
nected with the subject of rebirth. Although it is 
possible that one may grow from childhood up, 
so close to the Godward relation, that, instead of 
being driven, he is drawn into Christianity, the 
sense of sin, if it be understood to include the 
sense of un worth and of un worthiness, is still 
the most potent factor in making a man first ap- 
preciate Christianity. They who have thought 
consistently enough to see the inadequacy of 
earth's response to the soul's demands, they who 
have realized the entire emptiness of their efforts 
unless transformed by a divine effort, they who 



The Reborn Self 213 

have come almost to hate the self, are ready to 
prize the Gospel. 

The Christian life cannot be lived unless a man 
is ready to count all, all his efforts as refuse and 
himself as nothing except when motived by God's 
will. This is the larger sense of sin which leads to 
rebirth. The reconstruction brought about by 
the new insight must extend to all the motives and 
to every part of the character. 



One of the most striking of Christ's illustra- 
tions upon this point is that of the new cloth and 
the old garment. 

The best use to make of new cloth is not to cut 
it into patches for an old suit. For that which is 
put in to fill up taketh from the garment and the 
rent is made worse. The proper use of new cloth 
is to make a new suit. 

Hearers were patching up their old lives, piecing 
and choosing from the new religion, a little reform 
here, a little of the cloth of Christianity there. 
As a result that which was put in to fill up took 
from the garment and the rent was made worse. 

And to-day, likewise, men are too often content 
to use the new only to make over the old. They 
listen to an appeal whose force they acknowledge 
and they determine to change their lives in this 
respect and in that. Some go over the old gar- 



214 The Unexplored Self 

ment as often as once a year with a list of resolu- 
tions, a patch and a repair, a patch and a repair. 

In their moral clothes some resemble the 
effigies of Guy Fawkes. And the ridiculousness 
of this absurd appearance is increased when they 
strut about as though magnificently arrayed. 
One shoulder entirely bare is forgotten in calling 
attention with pride to the other shoulder which 
has been built out and padded in accordance with 
the latest custom plate. A great tear here is 
ignored in pointing to the careful way in which a 
tear somewhere else has been made invisible. 
Sometimes they overlook a whole portion of a 
garment that is lacking and sew upon another 
portion piece after piece, making a thick, incon- 
gruous wad taken from all the moral teachers in 
the world's history. 

The motley clowns of the ancient courts were 
at least wholly covered. It is often the philosophy 
of religious tailoring to-day to think that a few 
good pieces will make up for the rags and the gaps. 

Enough has been said to explain why the 
doctrine of regeneration is an essential part of 
Christian teaching. The words repentance, re- 
newal, conversion, are not strong enough. A 
man must be reborn. 



People in a retrospective frame of mind some- 
times say : I wish I could live my life over again. 



The Reborn Self 215 

It is hard to believe that they mean what they 
say. What they mean, probably is: I wish I 
could know what I now know and so start my life 
over again. 

It is doubtful whether any one would care to 
retrace the years exactly as they have been in the 
past. In spite of bright events, and cherished 
friendships, the tale that has been told, if it is to 
traverse the same path and lead to the same 
point again, one would hardly care to repeat. 

If one were to retain his entire personality, 
however, his knowledge of the world, his know- 
ledge of himself, his knowledge of the best values, 
to retain his present knowledge of means and 
ends — if he could retain all these and so live 
over again the years from childhood up, that 
were another thing, that would be a rebirth to 
be wished for. 

It might seem ridiculous for an adult to go into 
the infant class, but there is no statute against it 
that I know of. He could tear through the first 
books with an ease that would enroll him among 
the prodigies. And if he were willing to be an 
actual child, if he were not ashamed of the petty 
tasks, he would be promoted from class to class. 
The scholarships of the higher schools would be 
open to him, and he could in due time reach a 
position of influence and honor. 

We may imagine the word coming to a man in 
one of our cities that he is by rights an English 



2i6 The Unexplored Self 

prince, stolen away in infancy and brought up in 
poor surroundings, ignorant and untrained. 

He had been, let us say, indifferent as to his 
appearance and his manner of living, perhaps 
slouching in his gait, neglectful of cleanliness, 
careless of his language. Only news which 
brought both the sense of the new birth and with 
it also the sense of the need of a new birth would 
avail to transform the man. 

With such a sense, however, if he were willing 
to make this new birth a reality, to start as a babe, 
to go back to the steps of infancy, to begin at the 
very bottom, to mount stair by stair the entrance 
to learning, to manhood, and to nobility, there 
would be witnessed the new development, the 
metamorphosis, which is meant in the doctrine of 
Regeneration. Slowly the shoulders would go 
back and the head would become erect. There 
would grow an interest in books, in history, in 
politics. The man's entire bearing toward life 
and toward others would be altered. Not a 
single phase of his thought and his character but 
would be changed, his carriage, his thinking, his 
behavior. 



If he is willing to make the rebirth a reality — 
this is the key to the whole situation. 

The news which comes to every man is that he 
is by rights a citizen in a grander kingdom, a son in 



The Reborn Self 217 

a divine family, and that it is for him to accept 
that citizenship and to lay claim to his inheritance. 
This is a message which is so overwhelming that, 
if it were believed, makeshift, temporizing re- 
forms would seem as silly as they are. 

The danger in the modern view of evil is that a 
man may not be moved to recognize how slovenly 
and how unprepared he is for his estates. The 
danger is that a man may hot be humble enough 
to start at the bottom, to take off his pride and 
fling it away. 

To define evil as good misplaced should not 
palliate the evil. Sin is not an error of judgment. 
It is dominance of selfishness, and is as wicked 
to-day as it ever was, more wicked because of the 
very enlightenment. 

There is such a thing as sorrow for the past 
deed, without a repudiation of the old self. Such 
sorrow is not enough. Judas, for instance, 
repented thoroughly of his treachery; he brought 
back the thirty pieces of silver, and was so tor- 
mented with grief that he went out and hanged 
himself. It availed nothing. Had he been will- 
ing, not to hang himself, but to " crucify' ' the old 
self and in true humility to be born again, a dif- 
ferent destiny and a different name would have 
been his. 

I know of no way to illustrate the significance 
of the new birth better than by an imaginary 
picture of Judas renouncing his pride and starting 



2i 8 The Unexplored Self 

all over again. The picture is imaginary, never- 
theless in the experience of Christendom it is 
thoroughly true. 

Christ is being led out from the temple bearing 
his cross, weak with torture and discouragement, 
when suddenly there presses out from the throng 
Judas Iscariot. He comes with downcast eyes to 
his master's side and not daring to speak lifts the 
cross from the tired shoulder and takes it upon his 
own. 

In meekness and humility, amid the jeers of 
those who had known his vain remorse, he starts 
along the way. No words are necessary. Christ's 
joy is too full for utterance. There is no word of 
blame, but side by side they go along the road to 
Calvary. Judas is a child once more, in the 
primer class, learning as an infant to read and 
spell in life's book. 

This is, however, only the start. From now on 
less and less will it be disgust at the selfishness, and 
more and more will it be the ideal and confidence 
in the ideal which will do the constructive work, 
the work of edification, of building up. 



CHAPTER XXI 

CONFIDENCE IN THE IDEAL 



I SUPPOSE laymen often wonder why preachers 
select the topics that they do. The news- 
papers display more cleverness in finding matters 
of current interest. 

Such a subject as this which we have picked out 
is somewhat remote. Any subject which con- 
tains the word ideal savors of the visionary and 
unpractical. Ideals are for the transcendental- 
ists, not for the twentieth century. Ideals are 
for talkers and not for doers. 

The apparent divergence of preachers from 
popular interests is due, however, more to the 
words used than to an actual separation in 
thought. Language is not a flexible medium, and 
it takes time to fill in the chasm between words 
which concern only the immediate and those 
which look at life in its universal aspect. 

This process of filling in the chasm is now going 
on. Every day words are being given a wider 
bearing and the eternal words are being related to 

219 



220 The Unexplored Self 

the now. We are beginning to see that the 
religious word God and the practical word purpose 
are not far apart; that faith and valuation are 
closely allied; that worth and love are kindred 
words; that love of neighbor is much the same 
thing as public spirit. 

So our subject instead of being called Con- 
fidence in the Ideal, might be called Success. 
The latter title would at once strike a resonant 
chord, for there is no one, no matter how cynical, 
who does not delight in success. He may retain 
a wearied attitude and scoff at ambition, but 
inwardly his heart leaps in achievement. We 
might have entitled our subject Success, but the 
title we have chosen indicates more accurately 
the method of success and the larger bearings of 
success. 

For it is confidence in the ideal that takes the 
boy or girl from the regular routine and brings 
him or her into the region of greater possibility. 
It is confidence in the ideal that over-rides the 
dissuasion of friends and the disheartenment of 
enemies and finally results in accomplishment. 
It is confidence in the ideal that builds the big 
things of which men boast. It is confidence in 
the ideal that earns a man advancement. 

It is confidence in the ideal that makes the suc- 
cessful artists, writers, inventors. And outsiders 
little know how many shocks that confidence 
receives, how many times it almost fails under 



Confidence in the Ideal 221 

discouragements, ere the success be attained. 
Outsiders little know how great the confidence 
must needs be. 



This is an age of reason, an age when men 
boast of calmness and circumspection, but the 
deliberation appears, as a rule, only when the call 
is to follow the ideal, not when the call is to self- 
indulgence or deceptive pleasures. In the wrong- 
doing of this age of reason, recklessness is very 
little abated. It is characteristic that men move 
cautiously toward the good, but plunge when 
questionable practices are concerned. A man 
thumbs the pennies he gives to a good cause; he 
tosses the bills about in a saloon or at the race- 
track. A man counts the cost when the appeal is 
to stand for the right ; he throws discretion to the 
winds under the call of temptation. 

If men were as willing to burn the bridges 
behind them in setting out on the narrow way 
as they are when they start down the broad way, 
the Great White Way that leads to destruction, 
there would be more perseverance of the saints. 

It is when the call comes to a higher and purer 
life that the words straightway and immediately are 
the fitting words ; on the other hand when things 
appear with even a possible taint of wrong it is 
well to hesitate. Gently, slowly, in yielding to any 
impulse that might possibly strengthen the lower 



222 The Unexplored Self 

nature ; but immediately and straightway when in- 
spiration comes ; there is no time to lose ; every- 
thing else is to be cast aside. It is a rush order. 

The call for promptness is not merely because if 
taken at the beginning the paths lie more readily 
to the heights ; as in mountain climbing the roads 
to the top begin at the edge of the ascent, and if 
these roads are not taken at the first, precipices 
soon make the heights inaccessible. 

The call is for a confidence in the goods that are 
to be obtained. In every ordinary walk of life 
men recognize the need of courage and push. 
Even more is courage and push needed when the 
prize is another kind of treasure. Narrower 
forms of experience have formulated the thought 
in many ways. We are told to strike when the 
iron is hot. We are told, well begun is half done; 
fast bind fast find ; only the brave deserve the fair. 

We are told that fortune favors the valiant. 
The thought of ancient mythology was that 
Fortune, depicted with the hair short back of the 
head, if she was to be seized at all, was to be 
seized while coming toward one. These maxims 
may well be transferred to the domain of riches 
that are not so tangible. 



The difficulty is that ideals come at rather 
unusual times. They seem to be so fleeting that 



Confidence in the Ideal 223 

the common-sense man is inclined to think them 
not permanent and real. 

It is easy to assume that the more usual is the 
more real. It is hard to believe that the man's 
highest self, which he touches only at fleeting 
moments, is his truest self. 

One of the secrets of progress is to grasp what 
might readily pass away as a mere possibility and 
to make it permanent. 

A man who is tempering a blade alternately 
heats and cools it till at one instant there shines 
out the right glow and immediately he plunges it 
into the water. He has caught and held the best 
moment. 

So an artist painting a landscape works leisurely 
watching the changing tints. Then suddenly there 
flashes out from the sky a special hue, and the 
artist's whole manner becomes different. Straight- 
way he dips his brush into new colors, painting over 
much that was on his canvas before. His hand 
moves with great rapidity. He is making that 
evanescent tone which others perhaps at first 
will call untrue — he is making it stay so that the 
next time the sceptics may see it in the heavens. 

More are doubtless familiar with the process in 
developing a negative for a photograph. The 
plate is carefully watched in the bath till the 
maximum distinctness and reality is reached, and 
straightway and immediately the plate is placed 
in the fixer. 



224 The Unexplored Self 

A man's highest self, even though he touches it 
at fleeting moments, is his truest self. 

A man sunken in his evil way, for a moment 
comes to himself. It is a moment of revelation. 
His eyes are turned away from the straws which 
he has been raking and he has the vision of a pure 
life, sweet and kindly. He sees the crown held 
out to him above. 

His inclination is to say : This is but a passing 
whim ; this is not real ; to-morrow I will be back 
with my old eyes again. The inclination is to be 
cool and calm about it, to settle back, to wait and 
see what the morrow will show, to revert to the 
straws and through distrust of the ideal to lose the 
opportunity. 

The example of all the world's noble men would 
counsel, Spring up immediately; straightway press 
toward the prize ; reach up to the best there is in 
you and make that fixed; for your highest self is 
your truest self. 

People distrust their enthusiasms because they 
seem so unreliable. But the periods of enthusiasm 
are the ones when a man really lives. The rest 
of the time he is spiritless, a digesting, logical 
organism. That the flint is ordinarily cold and 
inert does not decide the nature of the flint. It is 
the sparks which give it its best description and 
show it of the substance of the stars. The flint 
enters into a higher range of usefulness because that 
spark can be caught and kindled into a flame. 



Confidence in the Ideal 225 



When an appeal is made in behalf of some good 
cause, men perceive an unaccustomed feeling of 
sympathy coming over them. What is this new 
feeling, they say, this sympathy, this love? there 
was none of it yesterday ; I doubt if there will be 
any of it to-morrow. They say, I must pull myself 
together; it is a hypnotic influence; it is a weak- 
ness to acknowledge the speaker's power; I will 
resist the impulse to pledge my help. 

And they do. They return to the lower plane 
of selfishness and they congratulate themselves 
the next day that they refused to let their emotions 
sway them. Of course, from the lower plane, 
unselfishness seems absurd. But if they had 
pledged themselves and made that unselfish 
impulse fast, they would have been glad of its 
permanence and welcomed the sensation of mov- 
ing in a less selfish track. 

A man who feels a yearning to help another 
may resist and later be glad he resisted, or else if 
he gives the assistance he will be glad he did. A 
man can fall back to the lower level whence noble 
thoughts will appear foolish, or else he can abide 
in the higher altitude and find the greater joy 
of it. 

Sometimes can be seen a fleet of sailboats 
anchored or tacking back and forth outside the 
bar till the tide reaches the flood. Then all sail is 
is 



226 The Unexplored Self 

set to cross the bar into the harbor while the tide 
is full. 

Coming to the life of love is something like 
that. The Christ may pass and repass while 
Peter and Andrew, John and James, learn to 
admire him and to love him. Then there comes 
a day when the call is heard ; the ideal stands out 
clear; Peter and John see that life is more than 
meat, that men are more important than nets and 
fish, that nets and fish are to be used only for 
the higher profession of helping men. Nets and 
fish had been their great interest; henceforward 
humanity is to be their central interest. They 
are to become fishers of men. Humanity, or the 
divine in humanity is to be the final object of all 
endeavor. 

Immediately and straightway are the words 
used of their response. They are the right words 
to associate with such ideals. 

The supposition prevails that an ideal is a 
vague and irresponsible thing, as uncontrollable 
as genius. This is a wrong supposition. The 
ideal may be a definite purpose and can be as 
directly cultivated as can a pansy in a flower bed. 
It is to this end that churches exist and the culture 
of the highest ideals is the special function of the 
Church. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE PLACE OF THE CHURCH 



A CERTAIN man wanted Christ to act as 
judge between him and his brother about 
an inheritance. Christ refused. This refusal 
surprised the man and has surprised many since. 
Why should not the religious leader be the best 
civil judge? 

The Old Testament, like the man in the narra- 
tive, wanted the State to be under the Church. 
Its goal was Theocracy. Its law was priest-made. 
The palace was subordinate to the temple. 

The theory seemed good, but Christ, with a 
remarkable common-sense, believed in separating 
Church and State, and history has shown him 
right. 

It would be interesting to look through history 
and study the vain attempts to unify the two 
organizations. There are many instances: the 
latei Roman empires, the Mohammedan govern- 
ments, the Roman Catholic efforts, Calvin's 
so-called Republic at Geneva, and many more. 

227 



228 The Unexplored Self 

In all such unions if the Church does dominate, 
the administration is either fanatic or weak, and 
it is not long before policy gets the right of way 
and the Church loses its religious vitality. 

This is inherent in the nature of the case. 
They have entirely different functions. The 
work of the Church is to provide ideals and to 
awaken the deeper desires. The work of the 
State is to regard the expedient. 



The Church looks to the future and at the 
present through the future. The State looks to 
the present and at the future through the present. 

Both standpoints are necessary, but the same 
organization cannot well carry out the divergent 
views; because only few see the same future and 
therefore the bodies which look at the present 
through the future must necessarily be many and 
must be unshackled. I mean that there must be 
perfect freedom in their constitutions and doc- 
trines. Ideals have such delicate wings that no 
restraints must be placed upon them. 

When, however, we come to the actual present, 
the majority strength or the majority vote is in 
the long run the safest legislature. 

In matters spiritual subjection to an authority 
is oppression. In matters temporal subjection to 
an authority is the only safeguard against anarchy. 



The Place of the Church 229 

In matters spiritual subjection to a majority 
vote is tyrannical. In matters temporal the ma- 
jority vote is the only safeguard against tyranny. 

No man should be let or hindered in his vision 
and propaganda of the more distant goods. A 
man's present actions must needs be controlled 
and regulated by a strong arm. 



I see no reason for deploring the division of the 
Church into different denominations. The pur- 
pose of life and the way of attaining the purpose is 
not clear enough for detailed agreement. Diverg- 
ent views must have entire liberty to struggle for 
existence and to work out a survival of the fittest. 

The variety of the world views is the best evi- 
dence of vitality and growth. That the ideals 
run so far in advance of the actual gives us our 
belief in progress. Were we to have but one 
denomination it would be at the expense of the 
content of religious experience. 

A Church separate from the State provides a 
solution for the antithesis between the ideal and 
the practical. It is a sempiternal problem, as 
we know, in regard to sabbath observance, in 
regard to intemperance, in regard to divorces, 
whether the ideal or practical is to control. 

When the antithesis between the ideal and prac- 
tical comes up in the individual life, there must be 
civil war in the one mind. The individual man 



230 The Unexplored Self 

has the difficult task of fighting out in a single 
organism the two controls. What one most 
wishes to do is rarely what one is best able to do. 
Many a faithful farm horse has worn out his 
heart pushed on in the races; and many a noble 
scion has broken his heart tugging at the plough. 

Many a man has been badly stung because he 
hived a presidential bee in his bonnet. He might 
have been a greater man if he had not been so 
ambitious. It is rubbish to say : Aim high, for 
you can attain what you set out for. Persever- 
ence has often done wonders, but quite as often 
misplaced ambition has ended in misery. 

It is frequently an anxious problem. May not 
the two birds in the bush be worth much more 
than the one in the hand? and again, in snatching 
at the shadow in the brook may one not lose what 
he already has? 



Fortunately in the matter of community action 
there can be separate bodies, one to determine the 
ought and another the expedient. 

In this statement there is a frank distinction 
between what ought to be done and what it is 
expedient to do. Such a distinction is disturbing 
to many who say that expediency should promptly 
give way to right. They are back with the Old 
Testament subordination of the State to the 
Church. They can take a high moral stand and 
make a vehement protest. 



The Place of the Church 231 

I also could be a zealot here and rave against 
mediation and against the caution and narrow- 
ness of the practical administrator; nevertheless 
the distinction is valid if we remember that there 
is little chance for agreement as to the more dis- 
tant aims, while there is some prospect of at least 
a majority agreement as to expediency. 

Let the man who would govern the present 
course by the needs of the distant future make 
that future so convincing that he wins a majority 
to his views, then his suggestions will pass from 
the realm of the ideal to that of the practical, and 
his proposals will become not merely a matter of 
ought but also expedient. 

To be sure, the majority opinion is never up to 
the high mark of some individual opinions and 
when legislation is left in the hands of the 
majority, the resultant statutes are not so good as 
those that might be formulated by some of the 
wiser and nobler heads; nevertheless a majority 
opinion again best determines which of the various 
leading minds are truly wiser and nobler, and so 
we are back with an organization necessarily dif- 
ferent from those which foster the ideal. 



There are many reasons for going into this dis- 
cussion as carefully as we have. 

In the first place, the question of the separation 



232 The Unexplored Self 

of the State and Church is right to the fore in 
England, France, Spain, and in most of the 
European countries. 

Our sympathies are variously drawn out by the 
contending factions. It is well to have an under- 
standing of the broader issues involved. 

In the second place, the argument for the 
separation of the Church and the State has not 
been as convincing as the common verdict of his- 
tory would lead us to expect. The argument has 
even favored the union rather than the separation. 
The spirit of the age is toward consolidation. 
Consolidation combines the advantages of 
economy and of increased efficiency. 

With such arguments a statesman either 
regards the Church as unnecessary, or would 
manage it as a part of the State. The prophet, 
likewise, looking for the shortest cut to his goal, 
longs for the power to legislate. 

As against the argument of such statesmen and 
prophets, however, those nations are strongest 
both in matters of Church and in matters of State 
which have separated the two. And the recent 
history of France and the present agitation in 
England and elsewhere would show that the 
separation is worth carrying out at considerable 
cost. 



In the third place, there is reason for going into 



The Place of the Church, 233 

this matter carefully because it makes clearer the 
place and the part of institutional work in the 
Church. 

In the minds of many the influence of the 
Church is to be reasserted by putting all the 
emphasis upon institutional work. There are 
men who thoroughly approve of the kindergartens, 
the sewing schools, the gymnasiums, the free 
clinics, and such like, but speak slightingly of 
Church worship. They will contribute to settle- 
ment work, but not to the Church proper. 

They have little understood the reason for the 
Church who do not realize that the institutional 
features ought to be but a small part of it. 
In saying this, I do not mean let there be less 
institutional features, but I mean let there be a 
preponderatingly greater sense of the deeper work 
of the Church. 

I think the time will come when the city, 
because of the inspiration of the churches, will 
furnish leaders of boys' clubs and of girls' clubs, 
will furnish rooms for meetings, plenty of gym- 
nasium facilities, and most of the features which at 
present are fostered by the more far-seeing heads. 

Education was in the hands of the churches till 
it was proven practical and expedient and then it 
became compulsory under the State. So prob- 
ably it will be with many of the experiments now 
made by the institutional churches. 

The Church is far more than a centre for 



234 The Unexplored Self 

charities ; civic bodies can probably better admin- 
ister charities. The Church is far more than a 
centre for philanthropic activities. It is, through 
its motivations, the inspirer of philanthropy. 

In this connection it is interesting to note that 
those institutional branches prosper best which 
are wholly separated in their administration from 
the church that provides the support. And 
even in the Church itself there are usually two 
separate internal systems, one administrative and 
the other inspirational. The Presbyterians, for 
instance, have the Board of Trustees and the 
Board of Elders, the Congregationalists have the 
Society and the Church, the Episcopalians have 
the Vestry and the Wardens. 



In the fourth place the argument for the sep- 
aration of the Church and State is important 
because there are those who criticise the Church 
for not plunging into the political movements. 
They would use the Church largely as an instru- 
ment for carrying through legislative reforms. 

Christian Socialism is in great vogue. The 
Kingdom of Heaven is vigorously interpreted as 
the body politic, and the Church is urged to 
become the great directive force. 

But the Church's work is far wider than that of 
advocating better social conditions and reforms, 
and of eliminating poverty. It is to make so 



The Place of the Church 235 

clear the big principles of right and purpose that 
citizens will of themselves support the nobler 
causes. 

We said that the Church looked at the pres- 
ent through the future. It must not forget the 
present. He has every reason to doubt his re- 
ligion who does not find it driving him to make 
his ideal actual. 

The union of the two is effectively restored 
when every Church member is aroused to patriot- 
ism and when every citizen is a sincere supporter 
of some church. 

The present and the future are each intimately 
dependent on the other. Heaven will not come 
as a cataclysm but as a part of the same evolution 
which is now going on. As was said in the last 
chapter, love of God is not very different from the 
thought of a valid purpose in activity, and love 
of neighbor is not very different from public 
spirit. 

The present stand for civic betterment is essen- 
tial ; still it is only a part of a much more difficult 
stand in behalf of the ideals and principles which 
impel to a desire for civic betterment. 



8 



In the fifth place, the argument for the sep- 
aration of the Church and State is important so 
that men may have the true regard and love for 



236 The Unexplored Self 

the Church, and so that men may obtain the right 
benefit from the Church. 

The special work of the Church is to quicken 
and make real the deeper values and desires. 
That life is more than meat and the body than 
raiment, this is the inspiration that is needed. 

Different churches make the appeal in different 
ways. The denominational lines are rather arti- 
ficial, like the parallels and meridians. There is 
more difference often between two churches in 
the same denomination than between those of 
different denominations. 

The profounder desires may be stirred by 
arguments, by exhortation, by liturgical accom- 
paniments — the methods are manifold. They all 
have their place. But the appeal is the distinct 
work of the Church, and it is essential to the 
salvation of society. 

What society needs is that men be aroused to 
the deeper currents, the under currents of their 
lives, that they cease to be satisfied with the sur- 
face motives ; and no body or organization can do 
this save the Church. The State cannot do it; 
the fraternal order cannot do it. Any club or 
order which sets out to stir men to an appreciation 
of the permanent and the eternal motives becomes 
a church. 

Church services are held not to arouse men to 
contribute to settlement work, not to teach 
morality and public spirit. The Sacraments are 



The Place of the Church 237 

administered to make men realize their responsi- 
bility to God, their relation to the larger life, their 
exaltation above the earthy and material, the 
nearness of the unseen world. 

Every part of the service should have a religious 
meaning, to kindle and enflame the better im- 
pulses. Not any of it should be regarded as 
preliminary or for ornament and embellishment. 

I believe that if men better understood the place 
of the Church and the impossibility of any other 
organization's taking its place, there would be a 
new burst of affection for the Church, more zeal 
in its support, and greater benefits from its 
services. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE MEN AND WOMEN OF TO-MORROW 



THE word kingdom, as used in the frequent 
New Testament phrases, the Kingdom of 
God, the Kingdom of Heaven, means rule or 
reign and not a locality or territory. 

We are beginning to understand that this reign 
did not refer to a remote place and to a distant 
date, not to a coming millennium, but that the 
new allegiance was to be accepted by the disciples 
at once. 

The understanding that this kingdom is mun- 
dane, at least in part, has been an important 
thing for the Church, since it has overcome the 
separation which many were making between 
practical people interested in the now, and Chris- 
tians interested in the hereafter. 

There are indeed quite a few passages in the 
Gospels, called the Parousia passages, which dis- 
tinctly speak of the kingdom as something to be 
manifested in the future and there can be no 
doubt that the writers so understood some of 

238 



Men and Women of To-morrow 239 

Christ's sayings. These passages have been 
curiously used for figuring out the end of the 
world. 

Set over against such interpretations, however, 
there stands, aside from plain words, the whole 
spirit of the Gospel, for Christ did not intend 
men to occupy themselves with any catastrophic 
millennium. 

We should not be too quick in concluding that 
the disciples misinterpreted the sense to such an 
extent that there remains no hope of knowing 
what Christ really meant. 

It will be moving in the direction of the dom- 
inant trend of the Gospels to find a more imme- 
diate meaning in any of these sayings which have 
usually been taken to refer to the end of the 
world. 



Perfectly consistent is it to speak of the rule of 
God as something hidden which will have a 

sudden and surprising manifestation; For as 

the lightning that lightneth out of one part under 
heaven shineth unto another part under heaven, 

so shall the son of man be in his day it is 

perfectly consistent to use such words and yet 
refer to things present. 

The suggestion is natural to take this kingdom 
that " cometh not with observation' ' as a ref- 
erence to a secret rule whether of good or of bad, 



240 The Unexplored Self 

which grows up within a man and within society, 
and, weaving into the eternal forces, at last 
governs. 

Unperceived there organizes another power, 
aside from the one outwardly known, from the 
despot will which manages the conscious choices, 
and from the de jure government with its enacted 
statutes — another rule which slowly obtains the 
the grip on things and finally takes affairs into 
its hand. 

By a natural process a cabinet, or a political 
machine, or a code of legalism is formed till in 
time the original power has become a figure-head 
while the real control has passed to this hidden 
rule which is in touch with the sources of author- 
ity. Very few of the actions of the human body 
or of a body politic are consciously determined. 

It is in the sense of this other rule, in touch with 
the elemental powers, that we are to read, I 
believe, some at least of the references to the 
secret coming of the kingdom. 



It is a lesson of the postponed appearance of 
the final rule. The lesson is not that of recogniz- 
ing the power of habits. It is not the old proverb 
that the tree will grow as the twig is bent. The 
rule of which it speaks is an energy, not a rut or 
groove. It is an actual force that takes the 
initiative and so directs and executes. 



Men and Women of To-morrow 241 

Habits are related to the mechanical world. 
This rule is related to the creative world, to the 
world of initiation, and so to the spirit world. 

The mind is not a passive coil of wire through 
which the thoughts pass and repass and where the 
will always determines the direction, but every 
current that goes through leaves a deposit and in 
time the inherent electricity, responsive to the 
outer forces, determines the direction of the flow. 

The falsehood which a child tells and soon for- 
gets, the inner rule does not forget nor will it ever 
forget. Every event establishes a permanent 
contact with the universal currents. Every act 
is a new stitch weaving the soul permanently into 
the great fabric of reality. 

The intellectual and emotional linkings of 
childhood are never broken, never left behind. 
They constitute an invisible spirit, an intangible 
second soul which in time takes on coherency and 
controls the outer acts, somewhat as the unseen 
arrangement of the dancing particles in the win- 
dow pane determines the feathery forms of the 
frost which astonish and delight on a winter's 
morning. 



Here, then, is the undeniable fact of two rules, 
a divided camp, and some have gone so far as to 
speak of the other rule as a secondary personality. 
16 



242 The Unexplored Self 

The two rules are spoken of by some as the 
spirit of good and the spirit of evil, the one fighting 
against the other for the possession of the soul. 

Some speak of their lives as a constant conflict 
against the Evil One who has found a dwelling in 
their hearts. With such people the good in me is 
myself and the bad is the Devil. 

With others the idea is reversed. Everything 
good in me is the work of the Holy Spirit and 
everything bad is my own doing This way of 
considering the matter has the virtue of greater 
humility. 

The Apostle Paul stated his experience in his 
usual vigorous way : For what I would that do I 
not, but what I hate that do I . . . For the good 
that I would that do I not, but the evil which I 
hate that do I. 

Such expressions have often seemed self-con- 
tradictory and unscientific. The most recent 
conclusions of mental study, however, confirm 
and give a basis to these experiences. 

Some writers on mental science have called this 
hidden rule which comes not with observation the 
subconscious self. This phrase is to be introduced 
with an apology, for it has been indiscriminately 
applied to bolster up all sorts of silly and immature 
speculations. As a consequence of the misuse of 
the phrase there is reason for caution in employing 
it. 

The fact of some equivalent to a subconscious 



Men and Women of To-morrow 243 

rule and control, however, is uncontested. The 
name happens to be recent and happens to be 
smirched by new and crude thought, so that we 
shall be chary in its use. 



When mental science tells us to be on the watch 
in respect to this subconscious self, it would be 
quite willing to use the language of Scripture: 
If the good man of the household had known at 
what hour the thief would come he would have 
watched and would not have suffered his house 
to be broken up; . . . Watch, therefore, for ye 
know not at what hour your lord cometh. 

Men fail to watch. They go on carelessly and 
serenely, thinking themselves unharmed by in- 
dulgences since they still possess their wills. 

All the while the hidden rule, working its way 
in from without, is gaining power, till at last the 
real impotency of the will is apparent. 

Men think that they have entire control of 
themselves and therefore can give in to unseen 
vices, to projects that are not with observation. 
They suddenly find that when the hour of the 
thier has come, the usurper asserts his power, 
the paper crown on the puppet will is tossed into 
the general holocaust, and misrule is supreme. 

A man who has been punctilious in his Church 
observances and regular in his devotions, but at 
heart smiting his fellow-servants . . . the lord of 



244 The Unexplored Self 

that servant shall come in a day that he looketh 
not for him and shall appoint him his place with 
the hypocrites. 

The thought of this inner rule comes as a cry of 
danger. It is saddening to think of the men who 
protest against that captivity in which they sud- 
denly find themselves, their futile struggles, their 
brief reforms, their losing fight. 

They once boasted that they would never part 
with their freedom, never would submit to a yoke, 
never would pledge their future conduct. Now 
they realize that they are not doing what they 
want to do and that they cannot do as they choose. 

Those whose hidden self has the same inclina- 
tions as the conscious self are little aware of the 
power of this rule that cometh not with observa- 
tion. By it the direction of a man's life is taken 
as completely out of his hands as is the beating of 
his heart or the prevention of his respiration. 

Men who endeavor to resist the rule appreci- 
ate this struggle. They begin to grow uneasy. 
They walk to and fro. They clinch their fists, 
but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they 
surrender. 

The lesson of the unobserved coming has, 
however, its obverse and bright side. Men who 
have been unconsciously preparing themselves by 
kindliness and sympathy will be surprised to 
find that a power above that of their own has come 
to place them in the kingdom and to hold them 



Men and Women of To-morrow 245 

there. They had fed the hungry, noticed 
strangers, clothed the destitute, visited the sick, 
and now they find themselves possessed by the 
rule that had been prepared for them from the 
foundation of the world. 



The science of mind uses the phrase, the sub- 
conscious self; Theology speaks both of the work 
of the Holy Spirit and of the recrudescence of the 
old Adam; Christ taught the return of his own 
spirit; Paul spoke of the divided self; some have 
thought themselves possessed of devils; some 
have said an angel directed them; some have 
thought themselves driven by fate. 

Whatever form of expression is used, the fact is 
of vital significance in Christian and in all re- 
ligious experience and is especially significant for 
the training of youth. 

It is for this reason that this closing chapter is 
entitled, The Men and Women of To-morrow. 

It is the men and women of to-morrow who, in 
the formative period, are developing with special 
rapidity the kingdom that cometh not with 
observation; and it is the men and women of 
to-morrow whom religious teaching can affect. 

To the men and women of to-day, who toil in 
the midst of the stream, the message is courage, 
keep hold, pull. Instruction is of little use to 



246 The Unexplored Self 

them. They can see better, or think they can see 
better than others, where the eddies and boulders 
are. 

For them sympathy and courage are in place, 
but they must fight their battles on grounds 
already chosen. They have already learned that 
advice from others is of small avail. The learning 
comes to every one as a bitter surprise. A new 
birth which effects a change in the subconscious 
self becomes rapidly more difficult as the years 
go on. 



In contrast with the disheartening fixity of 
maturity, however, there stand the plastic days 
of youth with their hopes and ambitions. The 
youth is the one who can be helped by religious 
instruction; while it is the adults who constitute 
the bulk of our sermon hearers. 

Only childhood, as we are told again and again, 
can enter the kingdom, and it is for the teachers, 
therefore, to be conversant with the transforming 
ideals of life. Forgotten in the later rush of busy 
life these ideals will nevertheless exert their 
beneficent influence and color all the years. 

Fortunate is the man whose earlier days have 
been spent in companionship with those who 
have felt the call of a larger destiny, who have 
grasped some phrase equivalent to the Kingdom 
of God. 



Men and Women of To-morrow 247 

Boys and young men are anxious to amass 
wealth and to establish themselves financially. 
They say: After I become rich I will have 
leisure to attend to philanthropy and kindliness 
and to the eternal and more beautiful aspects of 
life. Then when they have laid up for them- 
selves much goods they find themselves no longer 
masters of their interests. 

They are powerless to take delight in that which 
they had looked forward to. They can see the 
promised land from afar and hope for it for their 
children but for them entrance is forbidden. 

The young man is amazed that certain abuses 
continue because persons who are in places of 
influence are so inactive, but if he as a man of 
to-morrow waits until to-morrow before trying to 
make things better, he will find that as a man 
of to-day his will is impotent against his fixed 
character. 

We would long ago have reached the Golden 
Age, but that the youth is so heedless and the 
adult so fixed. 

The red iron which could easily be worked into 
nobler shapes is too hot for handling. The iron 
once become cool changes its shape with difficulty 
and then under the hardest blows of the hammer. 



8 



In spite of much intelligent criticism the 
opinion still prevails that the moral consciousness 



248 The Unexplored Self 

can be developed at a later period and that the 
will can at any time step in and take control. 

Some of the great educators have realized the 
futility of depending on the power of the individual 
will for moral betterment. Few, however, have 
realized that what opposes the will is not the habit 
of inertia and custom. There is an actual 
indwelling force more related to the eternal forces 
than to the particular personality. 

Our subject contains a cry of warning which 
preachers have hesitated to take up because man 
seemed to be degraded if his will power were 
belittled. 

This is no place to go into a discussion of the 
will, but the teaching of Christ is clear and in line 
with the most recent investigations: Watch and 
pray that ye enter not into temptation — Bring us 
not into temptation. 

The best and strongest character is formed 
through contact with good. The virtue which 
results from Christian nurture is not a surrender of 
personality; it is the rule of God in heaven and 
makes a man kin to the infinite. 

It is becoming more and more evident that the 
only preaching which can effect an actual change 
of character must be to the men and women of 
to-morrow, and therefore the teachers and parents 
must be the principal preachers. 

It is with the thought of this last chapter in 
mind that this book has been addressed to teachers 



Men and Women of To-morrow 249 

and students. Unnecessary misunderstandings 
seem to keep the youth from the churches, and in 
spite of the various efforts to make the Sunday- 
schools effective, there is small time allowed for 
the presentation of the Christian ideal. The week- 
day school teachers either do not understand 
their opportunity and their responsibility, or to a 
large extent have not known just what Christian- 
ity represents. If recognized as interested in the 
most valuable things of life and as teaching these 
things, Christianity fits not only into every 
curriculum, but becomes the basis of every 
pedagogy. 

Statements like this last lay one open to what, 
because of the misuse of the term, has come to be 
an " accusation' ' of pragmatism. So far as con- 
necting this volume with any school of philosophy 
is concerned, the " accusation' ' is unjustified. 
The call to link our thinking to the practical side 
of life is not peculiar to any period or to any school. 
The great development of the last few centuries in 
systematizing the relational factors of experience 
has brought with it a wide-spread effort to syste- 
matize the affective factors. Now that, " I think, 
therefore thinking is real," is an accepted axiom, 
we are ready to add the axiom, "I feel values, 
therefore values are real." From one point of 
view Christianity is an exposition, as was sug- 
gested in Chapter XIII, of this latter axiom. 



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